(The Minister of State for School
Standards): Today I am confirming detailed aspects
of schools and high needs funding arrangements for 2020-21. This
follows a statement by the Secretary of State for Education on 3
September, which confirmed to Parliament that the funding for
schools and high needs will, compared to 2019-20, rise by £2.6
billion for 2020-21, £4.8 billion for 2021-22, and £7.1 billion
for 2022-23.
In 2020-21, this funding will be distributed using the Schools
and High Needs National Funding Formulae (NFF). We will be
publishing provisional NFF allocations at local authority and
school level in October, including local authorities’ final
primary and secondary units of funding for the Schools Block.
Alongside this, in the usual way, we will publish technical
documents setting out the detail underpinning the formulae. We
will then publish final schools and high needs allocations for
local authorities in the Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG) in
December.
The Schools NFF for 2020-21 will continue to have the same
factors as at present, and we will continue to implement the
formula to address historic underfunding and move to a system
where funding is based on need. The key aspects of the formula
for 2020-21 are:
- The minimum per pupil funding levels will be set at £3,750
for primary schools and £5,000 for secondary schools. The
following year, in 2021-22, the primary minimum level will rise
to £4,000.
- The funding floor will be set at 1.84% per pupil, in line
with the forecast GDP deflator, to protect per pupil allocations
for all schools in real terms. This minimum increase in 2020-21
allocations will be based on the individual school’s NFF
allocation in 2019-20.
- Schools that are attracting their core NFF allocations will
benefit from an increase of 4% to the formula’s core factors.
- There will be no gains cap in the NFF, unlike the previous
two years, so that all schools attract their full core
allocations under the formula.
- As previously set out, we will make a technical change to the
mobility factor so that it allocates this funding using a
formulaic approach, rather than on the basis of historic spend.
- Growth funding will be based on the same methodology as this
year, with the same transitional protection ensuring that no
authority whose growth funding is unwinding will lose more than
0.5% of its 2019-20 schools block allocation.
The Secretary of State confirmed on 3 September the government’s
intention to move to a ‘hard’ NFF for schools – where budgets
will be set on the basis of a single, national formula. We
recognise that this will represent a significant change and we
will work closely with local authorities, schools and others to
make this transition as smoothly as possible.
In 2020-21 local authorities will continue to have discretion
over their schools funding formulae and, in consultation with
schools, will ultimately determine allocations in their area.
However, as a first step towards hardening the formula, from
2020-21 the government will make the use of the national minimum
per pupil funding levels, at the values in the school NFF,
compulsory for local authorities to use in their own funding
formulae.
In addition, two important restrictions will continue:
- Local authorities will continue to set a Minimum Funding
Guarantee in local formulae, which in 2020-21 must be between
+0.5% and +1.84%. This allows them to mirror the real terms
protection in the NFF, which is the Government’s expectation.
- Local authorities can only transfer up to 0.5% of their
School Block to other blocks of the DSG, with schools forum
approval. To transfer more than this, or any amount without
schools forum approval, they will have to make a request to the
Department for Education, even if the same amount was agreed in
the past two years.
The High Needs NFF for 2020-21 will also have the same factors as
at present. With over £700 million of additional funding, the
formula will:
- Ensure that every local authority will receive an increase of
at least 8% per head of 2 to 18 population through the funding
floor. This minimum increase in 2020-21 allocations will be based
on local authorities’ high needs allocations in 2019-20,
including the additional £125 million announced in December 2018.
- Above this minimum increase, the formula will allow local
authorities to see increases of up to 17%, again calculated on
the basis of per head of population.
The teachers’ pay grant and teachers’ pension employer
contributions grant will both continue to be paid separately from
the NFF in 2020-21. We will publish the rates that determine the
2020-21 allocations in due course.
