September 2017 saw the long-awaited outcome of a twenty year campaign for a fairer national funding formula (NFF). Unsurprisingly, it has provoked a range of reactions as every school works out if it is a ‘winner’ or ‘loser’.
The basic structure of the formula is unchanged from the consultation document produced earlier in the year, although some of the constituent figures have been tweaked.
There are four main building blocks:
- Basic per pupil funding: primary - £2,747, KS3 - £3,863, KS4 - £4,386
- Additional needs funding, which allocates money to compensate for deprivation, low prior attainment, English as an Additional Language and mobility
- School-led funding: a lump sum (the same for all schools), sparsity, and specific premises costs
- Geographic funding: Area Cost Adjustment factors to recognise that employing staff in different parts of the country has a financial impact.
This approach applies to the whole country and at last breaks the link with historic funding based upon decisions made by councils over thirty years ago. It is school-specific.
There is also a new High Needs formula which is broadly similar in structural terms but with extra factors to allow for the added complexity of the needs of children qualifying under this heading. The High Needs formula is not school-specific but is aggregated at local authority level.
As a methodology for distributing funding, all this is clear and rational. However, its introduction for 2018-2019 is overshadowed by the fact that the overall budget for schools is not being increased in line with inflation. The government claims to be increasing funding ‘in real terms’, by which it means that, as more pupils come through the system, there will be more money. The increase is not ‘real’ in the way most people would understand the word because inflationary pressures within schools (modest salary increases, increased employer contributions to pensions and national insurance, rising utility costs) are not fully covered. That is why there is militancy from teacher unions as their members grapple at school level with the pressure to reduce staffing or cut back on the more expensive parts of the curriculum.