Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether she plans to alter the school funding formula; and if she will make a statement.

The Government is committed to making school funding fairer, to protecting the schools budget and to maintaining the Minimum Funding Levels uplift in this Parliament.

The Government has already made significant progress on these commitments. We have protected schools funding for 2016-17 and baked into the baseline the extra £390 million we allocated in the previous parliament to the least fairly funded local authorities. We will come forward with our proposals on making school funding fairer in due course.

The Secretary of State and I met with my Honourable Friend the Member for Mid Sussex and colleagues from West Sussex recently to discuss the issue. The Government fully understands the strength of feeling among Members that school funding needs to be made fairer.