16 March 2007
The Department for Education and Skills is proposing changes to the school funding system to target more resources at those with deprived intakes.
Malcolm Trobe, president of the Association of School and College Leaders, told Public Finance he welcomed the proposal as it could help to eliminate inequalities.
Currently, schools with a high number of pupils on free school meals can receive less funding per head than schools with very few deprived pupils.
'The present system is averaged out; based on deprivation levels across an entire local authority, rather than at the school level,' he said. 'If we moved to a more personalised and postcode-based mode of funding, the result would be very different.'
The DfES is proposing replacing local authority-wide deprivation indicators with data sets collected by commercial bodies such as Experian. These are available at postcode level and so can give a more accurate reflection of the true social make-up and needs of an individual school. This would enable resources to be allocated more fairly between schools, rather than having to rely on the discretion of local authorities.
That would mean that 'pockets of deprivation' in otherwise wealthy areas would be more fairly funded, said Trobe.
But he was more wary of DfES proposals to allow local authorities to impose a 5% levy on school reserves – freeing some £75m a year to be spent on wider children's services.
He said that while it was important that schools used their revenue funding to pay for the education of their current intake of pupils, they did also need to build contingency reserves into their finances to pay for emergencies such as sick leave and urgent repairs.
PFmar2007
