Julie Abraham: Rural pupils deserve level playing field on funding

It is disappointing that there is to be a pause of 12 months before the Government introduces a national formula for schools funding.

After years of under-funding compared to the majority in England, East Riding schools and academies were optimistic when the Government announced its intention to introduce a national funding formula in 2017/18.

However, a change of Prime Minister and a new Secretary of State for Education means that, although the commitment is still there, the desire to get the new formula right brings with it a further year for our schools to absorb significant pressures to their budget with no increase in funding.

The Government has committed not to reduce funding to schools in the meantime but recent changes to national insurance and pension contributions, national pay increases and the introduction of the living wage and the apprenticeship levy will leave all schools across the country having to meet these significant additional demands with standstill budgets.

In the East Riding, our schools do not have the slack in their budgets to be able to absorb these additional pressures easily and it will be difficult to for it not to have an impact on outcomes for our children and young people.

We have just celebrated good KS2 results in the summer tests and our best ever GCSE and A-level results. Now we want to ensure that all of our students can have the best possible education in the future. We need to maintain our current staffing levels and class sizes and we need to ensure that school governors can continue to invest in the fabric of their buildings so as to ensure a pleasant, safe and energy-efficient place in which to educate their children.

How very different life is for young people and schools in rural areas where a secondary school catchment area can be 100 square miles and classmates may have been bused to school from villages many miles from their friends.

People also have a lovely view of East Yorkshire with its rolling hills and enviable coastline, but even so there are pockets of deprivation recognised by Ofsted as being hidden away in market towns and seaside communities.

Our glorious open countryside does not help when it comes to providing services that have to be replicated many times so that families don’t have to travel many miles to be seen. And it certainly does not help when it comes to recruitment, particularly for coastal schools, where half of the travel to work radius is in the North Sea. But we are where we are and we wouldn’t change it.

What our children and young people do need is a level playing field when it comes to funding for their education, so that all of the challenges that they face can be properly accounted for – and a quality education provided – so that they are ready to face adulthood equally well prepared as their peers.

All children, wherever they happen to have been born, should have the same level of funding towards their education.

How can it be right to say to a child in the East Riding that they are not worth as much as any other child?

How can it be right that a child in a school in the East Riding receives hundreds of pounds less each year than another child in a school with similar characteristics only a few miles away, just because they are the other side of an invisible administrative boundary?

And how can it possibly be right that there are many, many children who are not disadvantaged in any way but still receive more funding than a child in the East Riding who is entitled to the Pupil Premium Grant because of their family circumstances?

There will always be certain factors that have to be taken into account when it comes to education funding that will lead to an adjustment in the amounts paid to local authorities, whether it is deprivation, geographical or others. But funding will only be fair when each child and young person is recognised as having the same worth.

We applaud this Government’s recognition of the need for change and will quite accept if we are still at the bottom of the funding table if we can see that there is justification for that.

What we need now though is a commitment to help our schools, and schools across the country in the worst funded areas, to help them to cope with additional pressures whilst the new formula is being worked upon.

The previous Chancellor of the Exchequer set aside £500m for 2017/18 to bring in the new formula – we think our schools need help from that fund next year, not 12 months later.

Julie Abraham is a Conservative councillor and East Riding Council’s portfolio holder for children, young people and education.