Schools North East response to Prime Minister Schools Funding Announcement
Commenting on today’s announcement from the Prime Minister on a three year additional funding plan for schools in England, Schools North East Director of Operations Chris Zarraga said,
‘We welcome the government’s decision to respond to the repeated calls from ourselves and other organisations, to resolve the funding crisis in education. However, schools will not receive this funding until April 2020. The figures promised for next year do not go far enough to resolve the £4.2 billion funding gap identified by Schools North East, which would return funding to 2009 levels.’[1]
Moreover, an overall increase in funding does not address the significant impact that long term deprivation has on the academic performance and subsequent life chances of students in areas such as the North East. We reiterate our call for the government to urgently review the effects of high impact disadvantage on students and to ensure that any new funding is targeted to address this most effectively; especially in relation to regions like the North East where austerity measures have hit hard.’
Schools North East will be exploring these figures and the
impact this will have on the region in more depth as further details are
released by the government, with further analysis to follow.
[1] Based on Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) figures that, over the last 10 years, funding per pupil has fallen by 8% (in inflation-adjusted terms).