The campaign to get a fair slice of funding for schools in West Sussex continues and just before the Parliamentary recess the Secretary of State for Education announced an additional £1.3bn to be spent on schools on top of the budget set in the 2015 spending review. Therefore the total of the core funding for schools will rise from nearly £41bn in 2017/18 to £43.6bn by 2019/20. Further increases are planned after that to make sure that no school loses out. Money has been reallocated from the education Budget which had otherwise been intended for expansion of free schools and grammar schools which had proved contentious for some people.
However, I remain concerned however how this will pan out at the sharp end in terms of increasing pupil numbers and the costs coming down the line of teacher pay increases, national insurance and apprenticeship levy costs for example. Whilst that deals with the schools funding pot centrally it is important that the way it is shared out between different parts of the country is changed much more radically to make sure that West Sussex schools get a much fairer allocation. Currently West Sussex pupils receive just under £4,200 per annum on average pupils in equivalent schools in some London boroughs for example can receive the equivalent of over £7,000 and of course do much better from additional funding through things like pupil premium which the Coalition Government brought in to help disadvantaged pupils.
Whilst there are clear deprivation factors which will mean inner city school swill always merit a higher level of funding this gap is far too wide and this needs to be addressed properly as the Government has pledged to do. Subsequently the last consultation held by the Government attracted over 25,000 responses which are still being processed and the results will now be announced in September. It is vital at that stage that the funding formula is sufficiently changed so that the accumulated financial disadvantage that our schools have suffered is put right once and for all. I will continue to work with my West Sussex Parliamentary colleagues to put further pressure on the Government and help bring this about as we have been doing for some time.
To strengthen my arm in challenging the Government’s proposals and to make sure they really do work for us I invited heads of all the schools in the East Worthing & Shoreham constituency to join me for a roundtable to discuss exactly the level of challenges that they were facing from the current budgetary constraints. This was held over two sessions and most of the local schools attended, including governors in some cases, and we had a very useful discussion. I was particularly concerned to hear about the cuts that are already been made to some of the support services such as mental health therapists where the Prime Minister has quite rightly clearly identified this area as a priority in our schools recently. There are also worries about less experienced teachers taking over vacant posts from more expensive ones as salary costs are typically now accounting for up to 90% of a school’s budget meaning other items like maintenance and equipment are being neglected. Whilst some heads were in favour of retaining universal free school meals currently on offer to certain primary school year groups it was also having the effect of masking real deprivation levels where rural counties like West Sussex lose out. I was also concerned to hear about some of the safeguarding issues being raised and the rise in exclusions as some schools were not properly equipped with the appropriate staff to deal with challenging children.
I have promised to raise all these concerns in Parliament when we return and in the meantime have written to the Education Secretary citing many of the real life examples I have been given. In addition I made the request that there should be an independent assessment of the eventual fair funding proposals being put forward to ensure that they were genuinely fair to inner city and shire county schools and challenge them if not. I will continue to update the School Funding section of my website with further news but this remains the most important topical issue in my constituency and I appreciate the concerns that many parents have expressed to me.