Schools Update: National Funding Formula

Lord Knight of Weymouth Excerpts

Thursday 14th September 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

Well, it is true that we are the first Government who have actually done this. It is not easy and I pay tribute to the officials in the Department for Education. They tell me that they have been working on this for at least 10 years, as I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Knight, knows, and are personally delighted that it has happened.

[Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate the Government and particularly the officials on bringing this forward. I certainly remember commissioning a review of the funding formula back when I announced one, about 10 years ago. Unfortunately it felt as if politics, with things such as general elections and changes in government, got in the way of implementing the outcome of that review. These things happen. I am particularly pleased to see sparsity issues recognised in this announcement.

My question relates to a welcome guarantee, if I heard the Minister correctly, of a real-terms, per-head increase of at least 0.5% next year and 1% the year after. That is important. However, I am also mindful of this week’s report from the National Audit Office regarding the recruitment and retention of teachers—and I remind the House of my interest in respect of my work at TES. At paragraph 2.2, the report states:

“To meet the increasing need for teachers, particularly in secondary schools, the Department for Education … and schools will need to improve teacher recruitment and retention. We reported in February 2016 that the Department has not met its overall target for filling teacher training places in each of the past four years. It has since missed the target for a fifth year”.


As the department reflects on that, particularly given that this week we have seen the pay cap go for the police, is it possible that it might reflect that the pay cap for teachers needs to be lifted? If so, will the department then ensure that the Treasury funds that rather than it coming out of the money announced in this funding formula? I would hate to campaign to raise the pay cap for teachers but then see the ensuing problems as schools scramble to try to fund 0.5% from what, certainly in some of the urban areas, will be quite a limited extra amount of money.

[Lord Nash]

The noble Lord makes some very good points about teacher recruitment and retention. Of course we have a strong economy with very high levels of employment and very low levels of unemployment which impacts on the ability to recruit teachers. We are doing a huge amount of work on improving our recruitment approach, which is a much more regionally focused approach to look at where we particularly need to recruit teachers. There is no doubt that the work of a number of our multi-academy trusts in career development, CPD and teacher retention will help teacher retention.

The independent School Teachers’ Review Body has recommended teacher pay increases. We have listened carefully to what it recommended and accepted the recommendations. We continue to work closely with schools to help them manage their finances.