school financing | Schools Week

Councils must estimate free school pupil numbers under funding change

Local authorities will now have to estimate how many pupils move to certain free schools opening in their area under changes to how the government recoups funding. Under the current system, the government recoups cash that it gives directly to academy and free schools from their council’s dedicated schools grant. If a free school is […]

Explainer: How schools will be funded under the new national formula

The government has today published further details about its new national funding formula. Schools Week has taken a closer look at each of the new funding blocks. The funding formula is made up of four building blocks: basic per-pupil funding, additional needs funding, school-led funding and geographic funding. These are each broken down into another […]

DfE to open up academy finances in transparency drive

The government is set to lift a veil of secrecy over academy spending in a transparency drive that will reveal reported frauds, and uncover who the highest-paid chief executives are, how much they are paid and how much trusts spend on consultants. The education select committee this week published a “dry run” of a new-look […]

Feeder pre-school charges £275 ‘retainer fee’ for free nursery place

A primary’s “feeder” pre-school has been charging parents a “retainer fee” of almost £300 to secure government-funded nursery places that should have been free. St Peter’s pre-school playgroup, in Heswall, the Wirral, charged the parents of a toddler £275 to reserve a place for her ahead of her third birthday, despite her being entitled to […]

Union website predicts budget cuts for every school in England

A new interactive website which purports to calculate the cuts faced by every school in England has been launched – with some parts of the country predicted to lose as much as 16 per cent of their funding. The National Union of Teachers and the Association of Teachers and Lecturers have launched the School Cuts website […]

Academy sponsors owe £13m in pledged funding

Nearly £13 million in pledged capital funding is still owed to the government by eight academy sponsors, with two trusts owing more than £10 million between them. Early academy sponsors were required to pay 10 per cent of capital costs, capped at £2 million, towards building a new school. But a Freedom of Information (FOI) […]

Academy pension review will look at funding gap

A review launched into academy pension deficits will recommend ways to address the enormous funding gap in the Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS). Schools Week revealed last week that poor investment returns on pensions for support staff have left many multi-academy trusts with deficits amounting to tens of millions of pounds. Now accountancy company PricewaterhouseCoopers […]

Chief of trust under investigation attacks EFA

The leader of an academy trust under investigation by the Education Funding Agency (EFA) has launched a scathing attack on the government’s financial management. Dame Dana Ross-Wawrzynski (pictured), chief executive of Bright Futures Educational Trust, told a Westminster Education Forum event in London on Monday that there was “not enough money in the system” and […]

Capital funding delays force school to cut admissions

A school waiting for investment under the government’s flagship building programme has been forced to reduce its pupil numbers after classrooms were deemed so unsafe they had to be demolished. Great Barr School in Birmingham has been given permission by the Office of the Schools Adjudicator (OSA) to reduce its published admission number from 422 […]