Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of providing additional funding to Central Bedfordshire Council to help support the transition from a three to a two-tier education system.

Every year, the department uses the schools national funding formula (NFF) to distribute core funding for 5 to 16 year-old pupils, from reception to year 11, in mainstream state-funded schools in England.

In the current NFF, the vast majority of funding is distributed on the basis of pupil numbers and pupils’ characteristics. This allows funding distribution to be based on a fair and consistent assessment of need. The NFF is neutral to how schools are set up and schools are free to choose how best to spend the funding they receive.

The department provides capital funding through the basic need grant to support local authorities to meet their statutory duty to provide sufficient school places. While this funding is not designed to fund transitions from a three-tier to a two-tier system, the funding is not ringfenced, subject to published conditions, and local authorities are free to use this funding to best meet their local priorities. Central Bedfordshire Council will receive just under £36.1 million for places needed between May 2022 and September 2026, paid across the five financial years from 2021/22 to 2025/26. This takes their total funding allocated between 2011 and 2026 to just under £121.3 million. Importantly, the decision to move to a two-tier system is one for the local authority to make.