LGA’s call on school funding formula would take us back to square one says ASCL

Responding to the Local Government Association’s press release Setting 22,000 school budgets from Whitehall won’t work, say councils, Geoff Barton, General Secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said:

“The whole point of having a new national funding formula is to eliminate the postcode lottery that currently determines how funding is allocated to schools.

“Historic variations in the funding level to local authorities from central government, combined with 150 local authorities allocating money in different ways, has led to similar schools in different areas receiving significantly different funding. 

“This is precisely what we should be trying to get away from.

“If, under a new formula, local authorities were given the power to change the funding distribution, we will simply go back to square one.

“As ASCL has now been arguing for more than a decade, we need a national funding system that provides sufficient resources for all schools distributed fairly.”