The government will today be pressed in Parliament to honour its statement that every school in England will receive a cash increase.
Labour has triggered a Commons debate on school funding amid continuing warnings that the funding squeeze is forcing some schools to drop some subjects, increase class sizes and make staff redundant.
Labour will table a motion highlighting last year’s Conservative election pledge to “make sure that no school has its budget cut as a result of the new [national funding] formula”.
In January, new education secretary Damian Hinds told MPs that the new national funding formula meant that “each school will see at least a small cash increase”.
However, last month the UK Statistics Authority said it was not possible to say that every school will definitely see a small cash increase, because the actual amounts allocated to schools for the next two years will be decided by local authorities rather than the DfE.
In his letter, UK Statistics Authority chair Sir David Norgrove said: “The Secretary of State’s suggestion that ‘each school will see at least a small cash increase’ (our emphasis) was perhaps too strong. ‘On average will’ or ‘could’ would have been more precise.”
But in its response to this story the Department is still insisting that every school will see a “gain” in funding.
This afternoon, Labour is expected to ask MPs to call on the government to ensure that every school does receive a cash increase in per pupil funding in every year of the 2017 Parliament.
Last year, then education secretary Justine Greening announced an additional £1.3 billion of funding for schools over two years, from elsewhere in the DfE budget, which would freeze real-terms per pupil funding over that period.
However, the Institute for Fiscal Studies calculated that this still represented a 4.6 per cent real terms cut between 2015 and 2019.
A Department for Education spokesperson said: “There is more money going into education than ever before and the opposition’s claims are fundamentally misleading.
“The fact is, as a result of our national funding formula all schools will attract a gain of at least 0.5 per cent per pupil this year and 1 per cent per pupil by 2019/20.
“Core school funding will rise to a record £43.5 billion by 2020 - 50 per cent more per pupil in real terms than in 2000.”
