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This debate pack includes background on the wider national school funding context and reforms, plus information on the new National Funding Formula’s operation in the Liverpool area.  

The Government is planning major school funding reforms for England, including the introduction of a new schools National Funding Formula (NFF). It announced some changes to its funding reform plans in July 2017, and “£1.3 billion for schools and high needs across 2018-19 and 2019-20 in addition to the schools budget set at spending review 2015”. It confirmed these arrangements, with some further changes, in September 2017. 

The schools NFF will operate as a ‘soft’ format in 2018-19 and 2019-20, to work out notional individual school budgets only. These will then be aggregated; it will be up to local areas to then determine how to share out overall core funding between schools. They’ll do this in line with Government guidance, which has been revised so that the NFF can be more closely followed in local arrangements.

The key policy aims of the NFF reforms have been widely welcomed. However, many argue that the overall school funding pot is too small, and schools are struggling, and will continue to struggle, to meet their running costs.

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