National Funding Formulae for Schools and High Needs

Lord O'Shaughnessy Excerpts

Wednesday 14th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord O'Shaughnessy (Con)]

My Lords, I was not intending to get involved on that particular topic but, as noble Lords may know, I have been involved in setting up primary schools. Much as I would like even more money for primary, it is the case that as you go through secondary and have to have specialised teaching in specialised subjects—whereas in primary school it tends to be whole class—there are other costs involved, because classes tend to be smaller, particularly if you are teaching niche subjects.

Despite some of the negativity around these plans, I want to encourage the Minister and the Government to go forward with them. Through the Floreat academy trust that I founded, we have opened schools both in one of the lowest-funded local authorities in the country and in one of the best funded, in inner London. The pupil needs in the schools are not so different, and the requirements in terms of hiring staff are the same, so it is quite palpably unfair. Indeed, for multi-academy trusts that span a number of local authorities, it causes problems in the trust and among the schools if there is a concern—or, if you like, sometimes a sense of unfairness—about what has happened. Notwithstanding the difficult circumstances in which we find ourselves with the overall funding element, righting that historic wrong is incredibly important and cannot come soon enough.

[Lord Nash]

I am grateful for my noble friend’s support for this. Of course, he speaks with considerable knowledge in this area. As I said earlier, the first stage of the consultation was extremely well received and we believe that the second will be, too—but I invite all people who wish to make representations to do so.