School Funding: Stockport

Wednesday 14th October 2026 Westminster Hall

16:15

[Lisa Smart (Hazel Grove) (LD)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered school funding in Stockport.

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Stuart. I start by declaring an interest: I am in my 20th year of being an unpaid primary school governor. I am currently at the wonderful Fairway primary school in Offerton.

I am sure that we all agree that being an MP is a real privilege, and one of the best things that we get to do in this job is spend time in schools. Young people get to the nub of issues. They have very little filter, and they always leave me feeling much more positive about the future of our country. However, the school visits that I have made since being elected have included conversations with headteachers who—while they are doing remarkable things for their pupils and their school communities—are having to explain which posts they cannot fill, which support they have had to cut and which requests from parents they have had to turn down because the money is just not there.

The chief executive of the Honeycomb education trust, which includes Mellor primary school in my patch, told me that he had recently been left with three choices: lose three or four members of staff, lose a headteacher or take early retirement himself. He chose retirement. That is what the funding position is doing to experienced and celebrated school leaders such as Jim in my constituency.

Schools across Stockport are expected to provide the same educational experience for students as the rest of the country. Yet schools in my constituency and across the borough are funded at disproportionately lower levels per pupil compared with other places, including neighbouring Manchester. That is the case for much of the rest of the country.

Funding for our education system can be complex. Education has two core funding streams: the education cash limit budget, which comes through the council, and the dedicated schools grant, which is the core funding provided by central Government through the Department for Education for education purposes. That budget reaches schools mainly according to the number of pupils that are enrolled. Other considerations are also taken into account, including deprivation, number of children on free school meals, number of children with English as an additional language and low prior attainment.

The rate attached to each child, and the number of children in the school, decides almost everything about a school’s budget. The primary schools’ unit of funding in Manchester is £6,404. In neighbouring Stockport, it is £5,623. It does not cost almost £800 more to educate a child in Manchester than it does in Stockport, and it is hard to justify that big gap.

At secondary schools, the funding in Manchester averages £8,452. Stockport receives £7,320. That is a gap of £1,100 for every pupil and is £350 less than the national average. We are not just a little bit below the average in Stockport. Among all the authorities in England, Stockport’s secondary rate is one of the lowest in the country. At the top of the table are the inner London boroughs, some of which receive over £10,000 per pupil. The distance between the top of that table and those areas near the bottom is hard to defend.

Those differences in funding are having a dire effect in Stockport. I have been told that 68 of the 78 schools in Stockport are heading for a deficit, and that school reserves have fallen from £11 million to around £5 million. The schools that are attempting to remain financially resilient are joining multi-academy trusts based outside Stockport, and others are being pushed towards mergers.

When speaking to Jim from the Honeycomb education trust, he laid out the additional burdens that school leaders are facing in addition to limited funding. Those include the removal of the trust capacity fund, national insurance contributions that were not fully funded, long-term staff sickness absence and a growing number of children with special educational needs.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Lady for securing this debate. On special educational needs in particular, it is a very similar story in Northern Ireland where there has been historical underfunding. Does she share my concern about how some of the press are carrying stories about the number of people with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder? They are almost suggesting that the ADHD numbers are not correct. In my constituency, I can see clearly that the number of people with ADHD is rising. I have six grandchildren, and three have some educational challenges. Does the hon. Lady share my concern that the ADHD figures are rising and are correct?

[Lisa Smart]

I, too, have family members with ADHD diagnoses. We as a society have got much better at understanding neurodiversity. We understand the strengths of those who are neurodiverse and how best to educate and work with them. I agree with the hon. Gentleman that a better understanding of our fellow citizens is a good thing, and if that comes with a diagnosis, let us welcome that.

Councils receive a high-needs budget to pay for specialist places and extra support in mainstream schools. In Stockport, that came to just over £56 million this year, with more than 1,100 students holding high-needs places last year. That brings me to the deficit on the high-needs budget, which hangs over councils across England, and which Stockport knows well.

By March 2027, the cumulative deficit on Stockport’s dedicated schools grant is expected to reach about £68 million. Because of the statutory override, that sum sits in an unusable reserve, rather than on the council’s balance sheet, where it could be put to better use. The Government have said that, as part of their wider reforms to special educational needs provision, they will write off 90% of the accrued deficit at March 2027. For Stockport, that is an estimated £61 million, so of course I welcome that. It is the right thing to do, and councils have been asking for it for years. However, the override is due to end in March 2028, with a new funding model due to begin in April 2028. In between, Stockport expects to build up a further deficit of about £60 million across 2026-27 and 2027-28. The Government have said that more support will be confirmed, but that puts councils and schools in a difficult position, as they have to set budgets without knowing whether a sum almost as large as the first write-off will be covered. Schools and councils want to work with a clear understanding of what they should expect.

The council and families across the borough deserve better than that uncertainty. Parents of children with special educational needs should be provided with the certainty that school places will be available to them and that they do not have to worry about whether they will be funded. They should not be told that it depends on a funding model that is yet to be published. I would be really grateful if the Minister can update us on when schools should expect publication of the new funding model.

Funding disparities can disproportionately affect students from low socioeconomic backgrounds. Stockport is one of the most polarised boroughs in the country. We have communities that are among the most affluent in the region, and we also have the most deprived ward in the whole of Greater Manchester. Children in that ward start school with disadvantages that, on average, will never pick up. A funding system that sees only the prosperous areas of a borough and sets the rate to match lets down those children. That is why Stockport is a founder member of the f40 group—the campaign of the lowest-funded local authorities—which has pressed for years for a fairer distribution of education funding. The case has not changed. The gaps mean that an average one-form-entry primary school in Stockport receives about £164,000 less each year than it would if it were based in Manchester. Headteachers in my constituency cannot simply absorb such a gap.

The pressure is not only on budgets. In Marple and the surrounding villages, families living in the catchment area of Marple Hall school find that their children are not offered a place because the school is oversubscribed.

[Mr Tom Morrison (Cheadle) (LD)]

My hon. Friend is making a really strong statement about the schools in her patch and in wider Stockport. The oversubscription of schools impacts Cheadle too. Schools such as Woodford primary school have been oversubscribed for some time. Does she think that if we crack the funding issue and make funding fairer, that would help the admissions system and give parents the peace of mind that they can choose the school that is best for their kid?

[Lisa Smart]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, my constituency neighbour, for raising that point. There are a number of challenges when it comes to admissions, and funding is part of the answer. Multi-academy trusts, which are their own admission authority, work alongside local councils, which have the responsibility to find a place for a child, but their wishes and desires do not always align. I am doing work—I have been in correspondence with the Minister—to find a way through that. Every child deserves a brilliant education at a good local school, and parents should be able to choose the right school for their child, so I strongly agree with my hon. Friend.

I have heard directly from parents about the effect on them of their children having to get a bus that drives past Marple Hall to get to the school where they have been assigned a place. School funding challenges are also reaching organisations that work alongside our schools. One of my constituents, David from Romiley, runs a social enterprise with his wife that delivers educational activities in primary schools. He came to see me because of the Government’s decision to end the PE and sport premium. He is now expecting to have to make redundancies among his staff.

Will the Minister look again at how the national funding formula treats areas such as Stockport? A system that locks in historical allocations and averages out pockets of real deprivation does not match funding to need. Will the Department review the way the formula is built and, if so, set out a timetable for doing so? Will the Minister confirm what support will be available for the deficits that build up in 2026-27 and 2027-28 before the override ends? Councils need certainty now, not in the spring. Will she commit to publishing those figures in good time?

[Navendu Mishra (Stockport) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Lady, my constituency neighbour, for securing the debate. This is a very important issue. The hon. Lady, the hon. Member for Cheadle (Mr Morrison) and I, although we are from two different political parties, work well together on issues like this. Does she recognise that Stockport council has had £2 million in the inclusive mainstream fund allocation under this Government? The council has also had just over £2 million for the Experts at Hand programme. Does she share my frustration that Stockport council has met the 20-week deadline for only 18% of education, health and care plans, in comparison with the English average, which is said to be 50%?

[Lisa Smart]

The hon. Gentleman is entirely right that more funding coming to our borough is absolutely welcome, and he is completely right that the three of us, although we are not always ideologically aligned, work well when it comes to the shared ambitions for our borough. I strongly agree with him on that. I also agree that EHCP turnaround and the service that parents and families have been getting in Stockport have not been good enough. The three of us have raised that with the council, which has a clear aspiration and duty for it to improve. I also agree that some of the funding discrepancies are historical, and we need to work to fix them. The children who are going through our education service deserve better.

Additionally, when will the detail of the new special educational needs funding model, which is due to take effect from April ’28, be published? Will the Department consult councils and schools before it is finalised?

The children of Stockport are as bright, hard-working and deserving as any in the country. They should not be funded as though they are worth a little bit less, or indeed £800 less, than children in a neighbouring borough. I urge the Minister to look again at how we fund our schools, give councils certainty about special educational needs funding before the override ends and give the children of Stockport the fair deal they deserve.

16:29

[The Minister for School Standards (Georgia Gould)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Stuart. I appreciate the hon. Member for Stockport opening this important debate.

[Navendu Mishra]

Hazel Grove.

[Georgia Gould]

Sorry—and I apologise to my hon. Friend for giving away his job. I thank the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Lisa Smart) for opening the debate and for her commitment as a school governor for more than 20 years. Our school governors do such valuable work, and I can hear how passionate she is about these issues. We are, too. Investment in funding for education and schools is critical, and is a huge priority for this Government.

As the hon. Lady set out powerfully, teachers do important work around the country. We want to back them. That is why we have prioritised investment in education by making a significant investment in the core schools budget in financial year 2026-27, with an extra £2.3 billion for schools. That means that the core schools budget will total £67.6 billion, compared with £65.3 billion in 2025-26. That is a significant investment that shows how important education and schools are to this Government.

The hon. Lady also mentioned how important it is that wider infrastructure around schools continues to be funded. I was a council leader for many years and my experience of working closely with schools was that through the cuts we saw to local services—whether in support for young people or families—schools were increasingly picking up those wider pressures. That is why we are investing in all of the crucial services that sit around schools: Best Start in Life hubs, which deliver early intervention; Experts at Hand, which my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport talked about and which provide much-needed speech and language therapists and educational psychologists to support schools; or Families First partnerships, which bring back the early help and intervention that was cut. We are investing in addressing child poverty, whether through the extension of free school meals or the end to the two-child benefit cap. All that reduces pressure on schools and builds back those teams around schools.

The hon. Lady also talked about the importance of supporting children with special educational needs and disabilities, and about stepping in to support teachers. That was one of the main pressure points, and we have deeply heard the extent of those pressures on families, young people and educators. That is why we are taking forward the reforms to special educational needs and disabilities. We have consulted widely on the future model, which overhauls the system to create one that invests a lot earlier and brings funding directly into schools so that they are able to meet those needs in the long term. We have started that investment ahead of a full reform. We are putting £4 billion into early intervention, some of which is going directly into schools through the inclusive mainstream fund, and some into councils through Experts at Hand. There is also a significant £3.7 billion capital investment in creating new specialist places.

[Navendu Mishra]

I appreciate the Minister’s points about the capital investment, but not a week goes by when a parent does not contact my office about their frustration with the local council not meeting the assessment deadline. I encourage the Minister and the Department to engage with Stockport council, because 18% is just not good enough. There is also a point to be made about parents from low-income backgrounds often just giving up, whereas people from other backgrounds perhaps continue the fight, contact their local councillors or pursue legal remedies.

[Georgia Gould]

I absolutely agree that it is not an acceptable performance. As a Department, we are determined to hold councils to account on their performance regarding children with special educational needs and disabilities. For too long, that has been on individual parents, as my hon. Friend set out, and for some parents, with all the challenges they face, that is incredibly difficult.

We have asked every local authority in the country to develop a SEND reform plan and are monitoring the data within that plan quarterly. As the hon. Member for Hazel Grove set out, we are supporting local authorities to relieve 90% of their deficit, and that money is contingent on delivery of those SEND reform plans. We are putting in capacity support of £200 million around the country to support that as well as, where needed, to support intervention. We will be working closely with Stockport council, and I am very happy to meet Stockport MPs to discuss that in greater detail.

In terms of future years of deficit support, we have said that we will take a similar proportionate response to supporting local authorities, but that is contingent on them being proactive about reforming the system, supporting parents better and working with the authority. We have been clear on those expectations and how we will be holding them to account for delivery.

More broadly, the hon. Member for Hazel Grove asked about the distribution of the national funding formula and how it allocates funding. As she set out, it allocates funding based on pupil numbers and pupil characteristics. It means targeting funding at schools that have the greatest number of pupils with additional needs. In 2026-27, 11% of the schools national funding formula has been allocated through deprivation factors and 18% has been allocated for additional needs overall. That corresponds to £5.6 billion for deprivation and £9.2 billion for additional needs. There is a focus on the wide range of factors relating to the individual needs of children and young people that sit within the formula across the board. We have committed to keeping both the NFF and high needs funding under review as part of the system changes that we are working on more broadly.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport said, there is extra investment already going in for Stockport through the inclusive mainstream fund, Experts at Hand and the capital investment. We are also putting support into schools to better manage their budgets and support their collective buying power. There is our new energy for schools service, the supply teachers and education recruitment framework and a free banking comparison tool. We are also developing a national procurement framework for management information systems, helping schools to reduce costs and ensure that more funding is directed into provision for the children and young people that we want to focus on.

We are seeing greater investment in education, but also in those wider services that support young people. We want to ensure that that supports early intervention and supports schools with the wide range of pressures that they are facing. I am committed to working alongside Members to make sure that this works in every part of the country. I am very happy to take forward that conversation about the particular challenges facing Stockport.

Question put and agreed to.

16:36

Sitting suspended.