Laurence Robertson
Main Page: Laurence Robertson (Conservative - Tewkesbury)Department Debates - View all Laurence Robertson's debates with the Department for Education
(8 years, 11 months ago)
Commons Chamber9. What progress her Department is making on providing fairer funding for schools.
12. What progress she has made on the introduction of a national funding formula for schools.
13. What progress her Department is making on providing fairer funding for schools.
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. It is unfair that a primary pupil eligible for free school meals in Richmond receives £472 extra funding while a similar student in another part of Yorkshire receives almost £300 more. That is why we recently announced that the schools block funding rates for 2016-17 have been baked in the extra funding that we distributed in the last financial year to make funding fairer.
I welcome the fact that the Government are about to introduce a national funding formula, but may I urge the Minister to do it sooner rather than later, because the longer the unfairness goes on the more difficult it will be to correct?
I know the f40 group, of which my hon. Friend is a member, has been campaigning for 19 years for a fairer funding formula, so I can understand his impatience. He is right to highlight the financial pressures that schools are under, especially those in underfunded parts of the country; this is one of the reasons why we are committed to fairer funding. As I said, we have protected per pupil funding in each authority from 2015-16, meeting the commitment to protect the national schools budget.