Question to the Department for Education:

To ask His Majesty's Government what was the average real-terms, per-pupil funding for primary schools in (1) England and (2) Cornwall in each year since 2005.

The table below provides per pupil funding units from 2013/14 to 2023/24, which represent the funding provided by the government for schools in Cornwall each year.

The school funding system changed significantly between 2012/13 and 2013/14, which is when the schools block was first introduced. The department does not have comparable data for primary schools from 2005 to 2012/13.

From 2013/14, the department has supplied data on the “schools block per-pupil unit of funding”. This covers both primary and secondary schools together. The department does not have separate data for primary pupils for this period.

The funding system changed again in 2018/19 when the National Funding Formula (NFF) was introduced. With the introduction of the NFF, funding was provided by reference to primary and secondary schools separately. The table below shows both per primary and per secondary pupil funding amounts.

The scope of the per pupil figures pre and post-2018 in the table below are not directly comparable. In particular, the central services provided by local authorities was split out from the schools block funding in 2018/19, and instead funded separately through the central school services block from that year onwards.

The figures in the table below are provided on a cash basis. The department also published real-terms statistics on schools funding at the national level which does not distinguish by phase. The department used the GDP deflator to calculate real-terms funding levels. Further information can be found at: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/school-funding-statistics, and the GDP deflator can be found online at: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/methodology/school-funding-statistics-methodology.

The NFF takes account of a wide range of factors that affect the costs schools face, including the particular challenges faced by small schools in rural areas through the sparsity factor. This recognises that some schools are necessarily small because they are remote and do not have the same opportunities to grow or make efficiency savings as other schools, and that such schools often play a significant role in the rural communities they serve.

In recent years, the government has made changes to the sparsity factor which have seen the total amount allocated, nationally, increase from £26 million in 2020/21 to £97 million in 2023/24. In 2023/24, 108 of Cornwall’s 268 schools (40.3%) are in receipt of this funding. The change in Cornwall’s schools’ sparsity funding over time is illustrated in the table below:

Note: In financial year 2022/23 the sparsity calculation was changed