Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps the Government plans to take to protect state maintained schools in Bristol West from the effect on their budgets of rising (a) staff and (b) other costs and real-terms funding reductions in 2016-17 and in 2017-18.

The Government recognises the importance of investing in education, and at the Spending Review confirmed a real terms protection for the core schools budget. Throughout this Parliament, the money available for our schools will increase as pupil numbers rise.

As with other public services, we recognise that schools are facing cost pressures from salary increases, the introduction of the National Living Wage, increases to employers’ National Insurance and Teachers’ Pension Scheme contributions and general inflation.

We are introducing a National Funding Formula to give greater certainty on funding and allow schools to plan ahead effectively. This is to ensure that resources are matched fairly and consistently across the country to school and pupil need.

We are also committed to providing support for schools to improve their levels of efficiency. In January we published a wide range of tools and support available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/schools-financial-health-and-efficiency, and we will launch a school buying strategy to support schools to save over £1bn a year by 2019-20 on their non-staff spend.