Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if her Department will carry out and publish an assessment of the effect of changes on levels of funding for schools on (a) well-being of teachers and and (b) school results.

We have made a significant investment in our schools by providing an additional £1.3 billion across 2018-19 and 2019-20, over and above existing plans. As the independent Institute for Fiscal Studies has confirmed, overall funding per pupil will now be maintained in real terms up to 2020. The national funding formula will deliver higher per pupil funding in respect of every school, and every local area.

More schools are currently judged as good or outstanding by Ofsted than ever before. There were 1.8 million more pupils in schools judged to be ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ in England as of August 2016 compared to August 2010. And the attainment gap between disadvantaged students and those who are better off is closing.

We appreciate teachers’ dedication and hard work and understand that they need to be able to do their job well without sacrificing their personal life or compromising their wellbeing. Removing unnecessary workload for teachers is a priority for this government. We recognised the problem of unnecessary workload when we launched the Workload Challenge in 2014. On 24 February 2017 we published the results of our workload survey and a clear action plan setting out the steps we will take to help tackle this issue, including targeted support for schools.