Oral Answers to Questions

Daniel Kawczynski Excerpts

Monday 6th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

Record levels of funding are going into early years. We are now extending the 15 hours of free childcare to 30. It is simply wrong to characterise this Government as doing anything other than pumping record amounts of money into both early years and indeed the school system.

[Daniel Kawczynski (Shrewsbury and Atcham) (Con)]

8. What progress the Government are making on ensuring that school funding is fairly distributed in rural areas.

[Maria Caulfield (Lewes) (Con)]

16. What support the Government plan to provide for small rural schools as a result of the proposed national funding formula.

[The Minister for School Standards (Mr Nick Gibb)]

Under the proposed formula, small rural schools will gain an average of 1.3% in funding, on the basis of the illustrative figures. We have also confirmed that the national funding formula will include a sparsity factor. That will particularly target funding on small and remote schools, which we know play an important role in our local communities. On average, small schools serving such communities would gain 3.3%, and small primary schools 5.3%.

[Daniel Kawczynski]

I thank the Minister for that answer. Under these proposals, some Shrewsbury schools will benefit and others will lose. Overall as a country, we still see the extraordinary situation in which, on average, Shropshire pupils can get as little as half that of inner-city children. How can he justify parts of the United Kingdom continuing to get almost double what we get in Shropshire?

[Mr Gibb]

In Shropshire as a whole, school funding rises from £151.7 million to £153.2 million as a result of the national funding formula based on the illustrative figures. That is a rise of some 0.9%. In my hon. Friend’s constituency, schools as a group will see an additional £100,000 of funding.