News

DfE raids existing budgets for a third of £4.3bn Covid spending

Almost a third of the Department for Education’s extra Covid spending will be taken from existing budgets or underspends...

Tom Belger
Tom Belger
News

£10m ‘levelling up’ support will come from existing DfE budgets

None of the £10 million pledged today to improve the quality of teaching in four areas of England is...

Freddie Whittaker
Freddie Whittaker
News

Gibb brushes off £125m pupil premium ‘stealth cut’ complaints

Nick Gibb brushed off growing complaints about a “stealth” pupil premium cut leaving schools £125 million out of pocket....

Freddie Whittaker
Freddie Whittaker
News

Schools face new checks to ensure pupil premium spending ‘backed by evidence’

Schools will have to show their pupil premium spending is “backed by evidence” under new requirements announced by the...

Tom Belger
Tom Belger
News

Free school meals: 300k more pupils became eligible in first 7 months of Covid

The number of children eligible for free school meals surged in the first seven months of the Covid-19 pandemic,...

Tom Belger
Tom Belger
News

How the big academy trusts managed to ride out Covid finance hit

Some of the biggest multi-academy trusts have managed to ride out Covid’s toll on their finances – using savings,...

Tom Belger
Tom Belger
News

School funding: ‘Serious questions’ for government over £100m bailouts

Ministers have “serious questions to answer” over school funding bailouts for five councils, Labour has said, with calls for...

Tom Belger
Tom Belger
News

Schools in minister’s own constituency £130k worse-off under pupil premium change

Schools in Nick Gibb’s own constituency face being £130,000 worse off under his department’s controversial change to how it...

Tom Belger
Tom Belger
News

DfE to spend £7m on hundreds more school cost-cutting consultants

The Department for Education will spend £7 million expanding its army of cost-cutting consultants by up to 600 –...

Tom Belger
Tom Belger