Question to the Department for Education:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what will be the percentage reduction of school improvement funding to schools in the financial year 2022–23, compared to the financial year 2021–22.

Mainstream school budgets will see an average 5.8% year-on-year per pupil cash increase in financial year 2022-23 in England. This is taking Dedicated Schools Grant allocations together with the schools supplementary grant announced in December 2021. Schools can fund school improvement from this budget.

In addition, in financial year 2021-22, we provided approximately a further £45.3 million to local authorities, through the local authority school improvement monitoring and brokering grant, for their core school improvement functions relating to maintained schools. This is due to taper next year to reflect the reduced numbers of maintained schools. In financial year January 2022, we announced that we are reducing the rate at which this grant is paid by 50% in 2022-23 as a means of transitioning to full removal of this grant. This will bring the maintained sector better into line with the academy sector, who fund this type of activity from school budgets. The exact value of this grant in 2022-23 will depend on the numbers of maintained schools in each local authority when the grant is paid in April and September 2022.

We also continue to make available substantial support to both academy and maintained schools at low or no cost, including our network of curriculum and behaviour hubs, our world-class teacher development system, and our offer of free support from a National Leader of Education or strong multi-academy trust for schools that Ofsted judge require improvement.