National Funding Formula: Schools/High Needs

Debate between Catherine West and Justine Greening

Wednesday 14th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

The area cost adjustment should enable us to do that effectively. As I have said, it is not based just on overall labour cost assumptions; it is based on cost assumptions in relation to teachers more specifically, so it should enable us to reflect that in the funding formula that we have now put in place. My hon. Friend will of course have a chance to respond to the consultation, but that is what we have tried to do.

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

I am grateful for the Secretary of State’s statement. Will she explain the flexibility between local authorities? For example, in 2010 the funding for children’s services in Haringey, one of London’s poorest boroughs, was £102 million and in 2017-18 it will be £46 million, although the population has grown and the children are no less needy. How does she see that interplaying, and will she explain how it will be addressed in the consultation?

[Justine Greening]

I was talking about two flexibilities in the consultation. They include, in relation to the high-needs fund that we are now consulting on, the ability for local authorities that will still receive high-needs funding to share some of that with mainstream schools, if they feel that is a better way of operating to provide for special needs locally. Of course, some special needs children are in mainstream schools and some are in special schools. We wanted to include an additional flexibility for 2018-19, so that where there is agreement locally that the funding should flow the opposite way—from the schools budget into high needs, perhaps because of the way that special needs are delivered locally—that should be possible if there is overall agreement from the majority of schools. That is what we are consulting on. We want to look at whether there is a longer-term approach, but the whole point of the second-stage consultation is to get feedback on those proposals.