A number of the lowest funded education authorities in England have criticised the Government’s new funding formula for schools.
The f40 Group told MPs earlier this week they were ‘dissatisfied’ with the school funding proposals and said they would ‘fail’ to deliver fair funding.
Education secretary Justine Greening announced the new formula last December and said it would reform the current system which was ‘unfair, opaque and outdated’.
She promised from 2018 to 2019, more than 10,000 schools would gain funding and no school would face a reduction of more than 1.5% per pupil per year or 3% per pupil overall.
However, f40, which represents authorities where Government-set cash allocations for primary and secondary pupils are the lowest in the country, criticised the changes.
The group made four main criticisms of the formula: the proportion of weighting is given to additional needs rather than basic entitlement; the 3% funding floor ‘locks in’ historical differences; the weakness of evidence used to support the proposals; the amount invested in education funding and the cost pressures facing all schools.
