School funding for 2012-13

On 14th December the UK Department for Education issued details about school funding for the next financial year.

The key features are:

• The underlying school budget will be kept at flat cash per pupil before the addition of the Pupil Premium.
• No school will see more than a 1.5 per cent per pupil reduction (excluding sixth form funding)  before the Pupil Premium is added.
• The Government plans to fund an increased number of places for Sixth form students as we approach the raising of the participation age: 1,577,000 places in the 2012/13 academic year compared with the 1,543,000 in 2011/12.
• Transitional protection for sixth form budgets will continue until 2015/16.
• Overall capital funding remains the same as last year – £800 million to address the shortage in pupil places and £1.4 billion for maintenance, including £200 million for devolved formula capital. The methodology for allocating funding for pupil places will change to better reflect local need.
• Basic need allocations for 2012-13 will be decided using both numbers on roll and capacity data. No local authority will receive, in 2012-13, less than 80 per cent of the funding they would have received had we taken the same approach as taken for 2011-12.
• This does not include the additional £600 million for basic need allocated to Education in the autumn statement. No decisions have yet been made on how to disburse this money.
• Devolved Formula Capital will remain at similar levels to last year so that the limited capital available can be more strategically targeted.
• There is a central pot of £276 million  to meet the maintenance needs of Academies. It  will be administered in a similar way to this year.
• Over £107 million of capital funding will be available in 2012-13 to meet maintenance and building needs of sixth form colleges and demographic pressures for new 16-19 places in schools, Academies and sixth form colleges.
• £59 million of this funding will be allocated to the sixth form college Building Condition Improvement Fund 

The YPLA state that:

Core education programmes are being protected. £770 million will support disadvantaged young people.

The reduction in funding per sixth form student that any provider will suffer will be limited to a maximum of 3%. 

Allocations are based on lagged learner numbers and programme size.  Programme sizes will be reduced because the 114glh entitlement per learner is being reduced to 30glh.

Providers whose programme sizes are in the largest 20% will have their programme sizes reduced half way to the 80th percentile.