School Improvement

Tuesday 11th January 2022 Written Statements

[The Minister for School Standards (Mr Robin Walker)]

The Department for Education will today publish a Government response to the public consultation on reforming how local authorities’ school improvement functions are funded.

The Government response summarises responses and notes that Government will proceed to implementing the proposals consulted on. These are (i) that the local authority school improvement monitoring and brokering grant, forecast to be worth c.£42 million in 2022-23—based on October 2021 funding levels—will be reduced by 50% to c.£21 million for financial year 2022-23, prior to full removal in financial year 2023-24; and (ii) that provision will be included in the School and Early Years Finance (England) Regulations 2022 to instead allow local authorities to deduct funding for local authorities’ core school improvement activities from maintained school budgets.

These changes should be viewed in the context of Government continuing to deliver year-on-year, real-terms per-pupil increases to school funding, as the recent spending review invests an additional £4.7 billion in the core schools budget by 2024-25, including significant additional funding for high needs. Taking DSG allocations together with the £1.2 billion new schools supplementary grant announced in December 2021, mainstream school budgets are due to see an average 5.8% year-on-year per-pupil cash increase in 2022-23, with every local authority forecast to see at least a 4.7% increase per pupil.

I will place a copy of the Government response in the Libraries of both Houses.

[HCWS527]