Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what plans she has to tackle funding gaps between rural and urban National Funding Formula Allocations per pupil.

Funding for mainstream schools and high needs is £3.5 billion higher in 2023/24, compared to 2022/23. That is on top of the £4 billion, year on year increase provided in 2022/23, an increase of £7.5 billion, or over 15%, in just two years. This takes total funding for both mainstream schools and high needs to £57.3 billion in 2023/24.

The schools National Funding Formula (NFF) distributes funding fairly, based on schools’ and pupils’ needs and characteristics, and as a result of this, not all areas or schools attract the same level of funding. It is not the purpose of the NFF to give every school the same level of per pupil funding. Instead, it is right that schools with more pupils with additional needs, such as those indicated by measures of deprivation, low prior attainment, or English as an additional language, receive extra funding to help them meet the needs of all their pupils.

The Department appreciates that small schools in geographically challenging areas do not have the same opportunities to find efficiencies as those elsewhere. The sparsity factor in the NFF allocates additional funding specifically to these schools, without which pupils would have to travel a long way to get to school. £97 million has been allocated to small and remote schools through the sparsity factor in 2023/24, which is an increase from £26 million in the 2020/21 financial year.

The amount of additional funding that small schools can attract in 2023/24 has increased to up to £56,300 for primary schools, and up to £81,900 for secondary schools. Since 2022/23, the Department has been measuring schools’ remoteness more accurately, by road distances. This has led to a significant increase in the number of schools eligible for sparsity funding, with over 2,500 schools now eligible.