Justin Tomlinson MP Welcomes New Fairer Funding For Schools In North Swindon

Justin Tomlinson MP has welcomed the news that schools in North Swindon will soon benefit from a major increase in funding after the Education Secretary confirmed a New Fairer Funding Formula will come into force from next September.

Both Justin, and his South Swindon counterpart Robert Buckland, have long campaigned for a change to the outdated funding formula which has led to a postcode lottery, and seen schools in Swindon receive significantly less in funding than similar local authorities across England.

The current system for school funding has been described by experts unfair, opaque and outdated. The National Association of Head Teachers has said “a revised funding formula for schools is essential”, while The Association of School and College Leaders believes that “the way in which funding has been distributed to schools has been flawed for many years… Reform of the school funding system is vital”.

Schools facing the same challenges, and for which we set the same expectations, receive wildly different resources. Under this old flawed and broken formula, schools in different parts of the country who have the same proportion of their pupils eligible for the pupil premium, could see a variance in funding of £500 more for each pupil. The funding system is standing in the way of schools supporting every child to succeed and preventing teachers from delivering the highest-quality education they want to provide.

As a result, the core funding underpinning the national funding formulae will rise from almost £41 billion in 2017-18 to £42.4 billion in 2018-19 and £43.5 billion in 2019-20. It means that per pupil funding will now be maintained in real terms for the remaining two years of the Spending Review period, as we transition to the national funding formula.

In North Swindon, total funding for schools will increase from £63.2 million to £66.2 million; with the average increase in funding under the formula for local schools being 4.8%

This latest announcement builds on the hard-fought campaign of Swindon’s MPs to bring about Fairer Funding for Swindon’s schools.  Swindon’s schools have been particularly badly affected by Labour’s archaic funding formula and, prior to yesterday’s announcement, Justin and Robert had managed to secure more than £4.3million worth of transitional funding for the town’s schools as part of their fairer funding campaign.

Justin Tomlinson MP said: “This is fantastic news for teachers, parents and pupils across North Swindon. Since being elected in 2010 I have worked alongside teachers, Swindon Borough Council & my colleague Robert Buckland MP, to lobby Ministers to update the broken funding formula. We had some success two years ago, securing transitional funding, but I am delighted that we have now received confirmation that from next September our school will finally be fairly funded.”

Education Secretary Justine Greening said: “Standards are rising across our school system and a fairer funding formula will ensure we can build on that success. It will replace the outdated funding system which saw our children have very different amounts invested in their education purely because of where they were growing up. That was unacceptable and we have now made school funding fairer between schools for the first time in decades. It’s a long overdue reform and our £1.3 billion extra funding means every school can gain.”