Question
Last July councillors voted to support a motion that I proposed on the subject of school funding, which said:
“Government per pupil funding for Wokingham primary and secondary schools is the lowest in the country. This Council will actively lobby local MP’s the Secretary of State for Education and the Department of Education until the level of funding for our schools is improved.”
Can you please tell me what you have done so far to lobby for more funding for our schools?
Minutes:
Question
Last July Councillors voted to support a motion that I proposed on the subject of school funding, which said:
“Government per pupil funding for Wokingham primary and secondary schools is the lowest in the country. This Council will actively lobby local MPs the Secretary of State for Education and the Department of Education until the level of funding for our schools is improved.”
Can you please tell me what you have done so far to lobby for more funding for our schools?
Answer
The funding position for our schools is a matter of deep personal importance to me. You will remember our most recent presentations and conversations on this topic on the past week, at the Primary Schools Association Meeting, and as we maintain our focus on this issue.
We have made representations to the Department for Education setting out the poor settlement for our schools and the consequences of this lack of funding in terms of the additional pressures on our schools, our leaders and our teachers.
I have engaged our local MPs and been pleased with the support received. In particular, I would like to thank John Redwood and Teresa May for their unfailing challenge on our behalf. John Redwood has, I think, gone above and beyond in every way. He spoke on this on the cross party debate recently highlighting, in particular, the costs of setting up new schools which is a huge problem and later on we have got a paper on our Primary School Strategy. He has presented our Councillor petition to the House of Commons and he blogs regularly on his website. Also we have done lots of work internally as well through our Director of Children’s Services, Andy Couldrick and also Pauline has been petitioning on our behalf as well. So it has been a relentless back and forth to central Government and we will continue to do this.
The funding situation at present remains unchanged as you know. However I welcome the announcement that we had before Christmas to consult on the funding review of schools nationally. We will be actively taking part in this consultation and making representations on behalf of our children, young people and our schools but as I said in the Primary Schools Association meeting I do not want to hold my breathe because we already are the lowest funded authority in the whole of the country and they may just look at us in central Government and say “if they can do it perhaps everyone else can do it to”.
Supplementary question
You referred to last week’s meeting and obviously I have been lobbying from our side but there is no change yet despite everything that has happened. There is a prospect of a change when they change the funding formula; although like you I am not holding my breath. Do you believe that the Council has enough resources to be able to support the maintained schools that are looking at possibly setting deficit budgets for this year?
Supplementary answer
This year, which has been unusual through the designated schools grant, we have looked at how schools can maintain themselves through this difficult period. We have drawn up a five year financial plan and it looks like some schools will go into deficit budget so then they will come back out of it and they will be more sustainable at the end of the five years. Some of them, as you will have seen from going to that meeting, are looking potentially at the academy route, not very many at this point, but that may allow them to become more sustainable. There are other routes: looking at federation; looking at shared services; and lots of other things that can help them to be more sustainable. But I think that there are some things that we have offered help with and will continue to do that. We have been drawing up a paper, which again I talked about at the Primary Schools Association, about how we can help as a Council and will continue to do that. I also thank my colleague, Ian Pittock, who attends the Schools’ Forum, for how much work he has done.