Schools Update

James Cleverly Excerpts

Monday 17th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

From one James to another—James from Bury to James from Braintree.

[James Cleverly (Braintree) (Con)]

I welcome the Government’s delivery on our manifesto commitment to ensure that no school loses out under the national funding formula—it is nice to see that at least one party takes its educational commitments at election time seriously. For clarity, can the Secretary of State confirm to the parents and teachers who were concerned about some of the scare stories that were kicking around in March this year that no school will lose out as a result of the changes in the funding formula?

[Justine Greening]

I believe that I can, in the sense that we are going beyond saying that no schools will lose out as a result of the formula, and are saying that every school will gain at least 0.5% additional as part of the introduction of the school formula. It is important for me to be clear that the way we are introducing it is through working with local authorities. They therefore will put their own formula—the final allocation—to schools, but we will be very clear that what we are giving them means that no school need lose out, and in fact, further than that, every school should be able to gain.