Schools: Funding Formula

Lord Polak Excerpts

Tuesday 21st March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

All public services are facing budgetary pressures. We are still trying to recover from the deficit that we inherited. The National Audit Office has made it quite clear that it is reasonable to look to schools to make efficiency savings. The Education Endowment Fund has said that there is significant scope for better deployment of staff in schools. We find that many of our best schools educationally are also running themselves financially very efficiently. We believe that there is significant scope for saving, in non-staff costs in schools, of over £1 billion.

[Lord Polak (Con)]

Will the Minister join me in recognising that the current funding system for schools is fundamentally flawed? It is a postcode lottery, where resources provided to identical schools depend not on their needs but on location. This is unfair and needs to be addressed urgently.

[Lord Nash]

I wholeheartedly agree with my noble friend. As I have already said, the EPI, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, referred, has agreed with him that the system as it currently stands is broken, is unfair and must be addressed urgently. Underfunded schools do not have access to the same opportunities as others do, and this cannot be right. This is why we are introducing a much clearer, fairer and more transparent system.