An investigation into the Department for Education’s £370 million school funding blunder has determined that “checks should have been in place [that] would have detected the error”.
Auditing expert Peter Wyman, who was appointed to lead a review into the mistake, has today published his findings.
He found that the error had resulted from officials having not included some pupils in two new local authority areas into its national calculations.
His review concluded: “It is easy to see not only how the error occurred but also what could have been in place to have detected it.”
It comes after the DfE had to revise down National Funding Formula (NFF) allocation increases in October after an error was discovered in the processing of pupil numbers. Although the overall funding has remained the same, the mistake resulted in the government having to announce that the per-pupil increases were lower than previously stated.
Writing to the Commons Education Select Committee today, DfE permanent secretary Susan Acland-Hood said that the department had accepted the review’s recommendations in full and “improvements in the quality assurance process” had already been identified and were being implemented.
In response to the report, headteachers’ leaders have repeated calls for the government to honour the pupil funding allocations it had originally announced.
Error made at start of affordability calculation
The review found that the DfE funding error was made at the start of an affordability calculation in February and was down to the omission of pupil numbers from Cumberland and Westmoreland & Furness - the two local education authorities that replaced Cumbria on 1 April 2023.
This understated the forecast pupil numbers in the affordability calculation, therefore understating costs by 0.62 per cent (£370 million).
Mr Wyman said that owing to a “mismatch of input data”, no pupils for the old Cumbria or the new Cumberland and Westmoreland & Furness local authorities were included. The expert added that: “There was no formal process to ensure there was no such mismatch.”
The review states that because of an expected reduction in overall pupil numbers, “alarm bells were not triggered by the total pupil numbers that resulted”.
But the review finds: “At this stage of the process, checks should have been in place [that] would have detected the error. Checks later in the process, including tests like double running the calculation, assumed these inputs were correct.”
However, despite the mistake, Mr Wyman was positive about the DfE’s willingness to learn from the error. He said that “rather than being defensive and seeking to blame others for mistakes, it is clear a learning culture exists in the sections of the department I encountered”.
‘Easy to see’ how the error occurred
Writing to education secretary Gillian Keegan, Mr Wyman said that it was “easy to see” in hindsight “not only how the error occurred but also what could have been in place to have detected it before the affordability calculation was finalised”.
But he said “officials were simply following a tried-and-tested process that had worked without error in prior years”.
When the error came to light, union leaders had said that the £370 million reduction from what schools would have expected to receive should be provided. However, the now-former schools minister Nick Gibb rejected this request.
Today, Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: “This was a very frustrating error that resulted in trusts and local authorities having to revise their budgets, and schools being left with lower per-pupil funding than initially announced. Budget planning is challenging enough without this sort of mistake, which will have led to schools having to make cuts to their planned expenditure.
“We welcome the fact that there has been an independent review, as it is vital that lessons are learned so that nothing similar occurs in future. However, it remains our view that the government should honour the original allocations to schools and restore the £370 million that was subsequently cut.”
Local authorities have received their allocations for 2024-25 today, with the publication of the Dedicated Schools Grant.
The funding equates to an average of £5,300 per primary school pupil and £6,830 per secondary school pupil in 2024-25, up from £5,200 and £6,720 respectively in 2023-24.
