Asked by: Stephen Morgan (Labour - Portsmouth South)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to help schools plan their budgets for the 2023-2024 academic year.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The Government is committed to providing a world class education system for all pupils and has provided significant funding in education to achieve that. The Autumn Statement 2022 announced additional funding of £2 billion in each of the 2023/24 and 2024/25 financial years, over and above totals announced at the Spending Review 2021.
This means funding for mainstream schools and high needs is £3.5 billion higher in the 2023/24 financial year, compared to 2022/23 financial year. That is on top of the £4 billion, year on year increase provided in the 2022/23 financial year. This is an increase of £7.5 billion, or over 15%, in just two years.
Funding for both mainstream schools and high needs will total £58.8 billion in 2024/25. This is the highest ever level per pupil, in real terms as measured by the Institute for Fiscal Studies. The Government provides these increases to school revenue budgets so that schools can cover cost increases in the year ahead.
Funding for mainstream schools and high needs for 2023/24 is allocated through the schools and high needs National Funding Formulae (NFFs), published in July 2022. This determines the amount of funding each Local Authority receives for the schools in their area, and final school allocations are then determined by each Local Authority’s own local funding formula.
All schools should have been notified of their funding allocations for 2023/24. Academies will receive their funding allocations on an academic year basis from the Education and Skills Funding Agency, and maintained schools receive their funding on a financial year basis from their Local Authorities.
In addition to funding through the NFF, in 2023/24 mainstream schools also receive funding through the Mainstream Schools Additional Grant (MSAG). The Department has now published school level allocations of the MSAG funding, so that all eligible schools can see their additional funding through this grant. Pupil Premium allocations for the 2023/24 financial year have also been published.
The Department understands that one of the key concerns of schools regarding budget planning in the 2023/24 academic year is teachers’ pay.
Following unions’ rejection of the Government’s 4.5% offer in March, the independent School Teachers’ Review Body has submitted its recommendations to the Government on teacher pay for the 2023/24 academic year, as part of the normal process. The Department will be considering the recommendations and continues to work across government to ensure that announcements can be made as early as possible. This year, for example, to allow trusts more time to prepare their budgets, the Department has extended the deadline for the Budget Forecast Return that academies are required to provide, setting out their budget plans, to 31 August 2023.
It is recommended that schools consider the range of possible scenarios on the different cost factors, including on support staff pay and energy, that might materialise, and what the implications would be for their individual school.
Guidance to help schools complete forecasts can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/academies-budget-forecast-return-guide-to-using-the-online-form/academies-budget-forecast-guidance-for-completing-the-online-form. The Department’s School Resource Management offer also includes advice to help with forecasting, including estates management advice, buying guides and how to join or create your own school professionals network.
Asked by: Bill Esterson (Labour - Sefton Central)
Question to the Department for Energy Security & Net Zero:
To ask the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, how much funding his Department has provided through phase (a) one and (b) two of the Industrial Energy Transformation Fund.
Answered by Graham Stuart
The £289m Industrial Energy Transformation Fund (IETF) has run six competition windows to date: Phase 1 of the IETF opened in 2020, and the final window of Phase 2 closed at the beginning of 2023.
As of July 2023, the Government has already allocated funding to over 130 projects and studies worth around £167.9 million. Allocations by Phase are as follows:
Phase 1: £48.2m
Phase 2: £119.6m
Further IETF allocations will be made once funding decisions for the final window of Phase 2 have concluded in Summer this year.
Asked by: Janet Daby (Labour - Lewisham East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what data her Department holds on the real-terms level of core funding for schools in each year since 2010 using 2010 as the base year.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The Government is committed to providing a world class education system for all pupils and has provided significant funding for education to achieve that.
The Autumn Statement 2022 announced additional investment of £2 billion in each of 2023/24 and 2024/25, over and above totals announced at the 2021 Spending Review. This means funding for mainstream schools and high needs is £3.5 billion higher in 2023/24, compared to 2022/23. That is on top of the £4 billion, year on year increase provided in 2022/23, an increase of £7.5 billion, or over 15%, in just two years.
This additional funding will enable head teachers to continue to invest in the areas that positively impact educational attainment, including high quality teaching and targeted support to the pupils who need it most. It will also help schools to manage higher costs, including higher energy bills and staff pay awards.
Total funding for both mainstream schools and high needs will total £58.8 billion in 2024/25. This is the highest ever level in real terms per pupil, as measured by the Institute for Fiscal Studies.
Information on funding for schools, in real terms, is available through the Department’s published data at: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/school-funding-statistics. This sets out that that when adjusted for inflation, funding per pupil was broadly flat between 2010/11 and 2015/16 at around £6,700 in 2022/23 prices. It then fell by 3.8% over 2016/17 and 2017/18, but subsequently increased by 1.3% over 2018/19 and 2019/20. Since then, funding has increased by 10.3% over the course of the following four years, reaching £7,220 in 2023/24 (in 2022/23 prices).
Asked by: Jonathan Edwards (Independent - Carmarthen East and Dinefwr)
Question to the Department for Energy Security & Net Zero:
To ask the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, whether he has made an estimate of the geothermal energy potential of minewater in the South Wales Coalfield; and whether he has had recent discussions with the Welsh Government on this issue.
Answered by Graham Stuart
There is ongoing work to assess the potential contribution of geothermal heat in Wales. The Coal Authority is working closely with the Welsh Government to produce a full Mine Water Heat resource map for Wales, identifying key opportunity locations and an overall resource estimate. The map is scheduled for completion later this year.
Heat is a devolved policy area but the Department has funded studies for local authorities to explore minewater heat opportunities across South Wales.
Asked by: Bill Esterson (Labour - Sefton Central)
Question to the Department for Energy Security & Net Zero:
To ask the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, whether he plans to take steps to help decarbonise the UK ceramics sector.
Answered by Graham Stuart
Innovative ceramics fuel mixes were supported through the Industrial Fuel Switching competition, with £300,000 for hydrogen trials in Stoke. On 5th June, the Government launched the Local Industrial Decarbonisation Plans competition, which will provide support to local areas and could support initiatives for ceramic decarbonisation. Funding for deployment of low carbon technologies, and for feasibility/engineering studies, is also available through the Industrial Energy Transformation Fund (IETF). Subject to business case approval, IETF Phase 3 will open for applications in early 2024, worth up to £185m.
Asked by: Fabian Hamilton (Labour - Leeds North East)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with reference to the Scope report entitled Disability Price Tag 2023: the extra cost of disability, what assessment he has made of the implications for his policies of that report's findings on additional costs for disabled households.
Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)
There have been many studies estimating the costs of disability, including the Scope report. The findings vary due to the definitions of disability and the method being used.
The Government understands the pressures people, including those who are disabled, are facing with the cost of living and has taken further, decisive action to support people with their energy bills. We are providing extensive support to disabled people, and those with a long term health condition, to help them live independent lives. In 2023/24, we will spend around £78.6bn on benefits to support disabled people and people with health conditions in Great Britain.
In April, we uprated benefit rates and State Pensions by 10.1%. In order to increase the number of households who can benefit from these uprating decisions, the benefit cap levels are also increasing by the same amount.
In addition, for 2023/24, households on eligible means-tested benefits will get up to £900 in Cost of Living Payments. This will be split into three payments across the 2023/24 financial year, with the first payment of £301 being made between 25 April and 17 May. A separate £150 payment will be made to individuals in receipt of eligible disability benefits in the summer. Further to this, the Energy Price Guarantee will be extended from April 2023 until the end of March 2024, meaning a typical household bill will be around £2,500 per year in Great Britain.
The Household Support Fund will continue until March 2024. This year long extension allows local authorities in England to continue to provide discretionary support to those most in need with the significantly rising cost of living. The guidance for local authorities for this next iteration has now been published and can be found here: 1 April 2023 to 31 March 2024: Household Support Fund guidance for county councils and unitary authorities in England - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk). The devolved administrations will receive consequential funding as usual to spend at their discretion.
Asked by: Mark Hendrick (Labour (Co-op) - Preston)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether it is her Department's policy that any future pay increases for school staff will not come from existing school budgets.
Answered by Nick Gibb
Funding for mainstream schools and high needs, including the additional funding announced at the Autumn Statement 2022, is £3.5 billion higher in 2023/24 compared to 2022/23. Funding for both mainstream schools and high needs will total £58.8 billion in 2024/25, the highest ever level in real terms per pupil. After accounting for the new pay offers in 2023, the Institute for Fiscal Studies estimates that school funding is still growing faster than school costs.
In addition to this core revenue funding, schools receive funding through a number of separate streams, including: the pupil premium, worth £2.9 billion in 2023/24 to support disadvantaged pupils; Universal Infant Free School Meals funding; and the recovery premium and the National Tutoring Programme to support education recovery following the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Department provides these increases to school revenue budgets so that schools can cover cost increases in the year ahead, including to teacher pay.
The Department also has a capital budget of £7 billion for 2023/24, which funds a range of programmes for schools, such as the school rebuilding programme. Information about this particular programme is available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/school-rebuilding-programme.
In February 2023, the Department set out its best assessment of teachers’ pay affordability to the School Teachers’ Review Body, so that they could make an informed independent decision on the pay award. The Department’s approach reflected some of the continued uncertainty around areas like energy costs, as this is a particularly important consideration this year. The written evidence acknowledged that there were circumstances where a pay award in excess of 3.5% might become affordable, on average, for schools. In particular, if energy prices drop significantly. This would provide scope for additional spending in areas which will further benefit pupils, including a higher pay award.
In March, the Government offered teachers a £1,000 payment on top of this year's pay rise, a commitment to cut workload by five hours per week, and a headline pay increase of 4.5% for next year. The offer included further funding of around £620 million in 2023/24, including a grant of £530 million for the one-off payment, as set out here: https://educationhub.blog.gov.uk/2023/03/28/teacher-strikes-latest-everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-teacher-pay-offer/.
By taking into account the Government’s most up-to-date assumptions for both energy prices and support staff pay for 2023/24, it calculates that a 4% teacher pay award should be affordable within existing funding. This includes the overall £3.5 billion funding increase schools are seeing this year, thanks to the additional £2 billion funding announced at the 2022 Autumn Statement. The Government’s judgement of the affordability of teacher pay increases is, as usual, based on national figures, which equate to the position for an average school.
The additional £620 million offered as part of the pay offer would have covered the remaining 0.5% of the 4.5% pay offer, meaning that the pay offer would have been fully funded as per the Department’s national calculations. The Office for Statistics Regulation has confirmed that the Department has set out how it has reached this conclusion transparently, in line with its regulatory guidance on statements about public funding.
Following unions’ rejection of the offer, the teachers’ pay award for 2023 will now be decided through the independent pay review body process, as usual. The Department’s position remains that a 4% teacher pay award should be affordable, nationally, from the funding increases already promised to schools.
As usual, schools should plan for how teacher pay awards could be managed within this existing funding. It would be sensible for schools to consider the range of possible scenarios on pay that might materialise and what the implications would be for their individual school.
Asked by: Royston Smith (Conservative - Southampton, Itchen)
Question to the Department for Energy Security & Net Zero:
To ask the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, what assessment his Department has made of the effectiveness of geothermal energy in district heating network schemes.
Answered by Graham Stuart
The Government has not undertaken a general assessment of the effectiveness of geothermal energy for district heating in the UK due to the small number of operational geothermal district heating schemes. Case studies have been developed for several geothermal schemes across Europe, which demonstrate that geothermal heat can be an effective low carbon heat source for heat networks.
Asked by: Fleur Anderson (Labour - Putney)
Question to the Department for Energy Security & Net Zero:
To ask the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, what assessment he has made of the plausibility of extracting hydroelectrically-generated power from (a) the River Thames and (b) other major UK rivers.
Answered by Graham Stuart
Hydropower accounts for approximately 2% of total electricity generation in the UK. Much of this deployment is in a small run-of-river projects, which use the natural downward flow of rivers and tend to be relatively expensive.
Studies in Scotland, England and Wales indicate that there is a maximum remaining technical potential of around 1.5GW for small-scale hydro, including in rivers in the UK.
The viable remaining resource is less than 1GW due to economic and environmental constraints. This represents less than 1% of total generation capacity, and cannot therefore be a significant contributor to the UK's future generation plans.
Asked by: Lord Alton of Liverpool (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Energy Security & Net Zero:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether they have made any study of the tidal power stations at (1) Shashan in China, and (2) Rance in France, including a comparison of the life span and cost of decommissioning nuclear power stations; whether they are aware of any tidal barrage scheme being decommissioned; and how they assess the longevity of tidal power by comparison to other energy sources.
Answered by Lord Callanan - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Energy Security and Net Zero)
The Government has not undertaken any specific studies of the Shashan and Rance tidal power stations nor has it commissioned an assessment to compare the life span and costs of decommissioning for tidal and nuclear power stations.
Any proposed tidal range schemes would need to demonstrate strong evidence of value for money in the context of other low-carbon technologies inclusive of life span and costs of decommissioning, as well as details of their associated energy system benefits and environmental impact mitigation strategies before the Government could take a view on their potential or on the funding models appropriate for exploration.