School Funding in the North East of England

The Government is planning to introduce a national funding formula (NFF) to calculate the amount of core revenue funding that mainstream schools in England will attract in respect of primary and secondary (but not sixth form) pupils.  There will be separate formulas to calculate early years funding and high need funding (largely this is for high-cost provision for children with special educational needs and disabilities), as well as for some services still centrally provided by local authorities.  The NFF is due to be introduced in a ‘soft’ format in 2018-19 and a ‘hard’ format from 2019-20.  The Government has consulted on the weightings in the NFF, and its phased introduction.  The second round of consultations closed on 22 March 2017.

According to Government figures, schools in most constituencies in the North East of England are expected to see relatively small increases in funding under the consultation proposals. The main exceptions are South Shields, the Newcastle constituencies and Jarrow which would see increases of more than 2.5%. Overall five constituencies would see falls under the proposals, the largest of which is Hartlepool at 1.4%.

The briefing paper, School funding in England. Current system and proposals for ‘fairer school funding’ (SN 06702) gives much more background to the proposed changes.