Education - Conservative Impact

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The Conservatives keep on insisting that they are providing more money to education. Not only is that untrue, but as they are spending the money so unwisely, frontline education is suffering massive cuts. This page provides insight into how, in real terms, the money to schools has been cut and how due to Tory education policy, the situation is even worse than the one spending cuts would have created if they had left well alone.

School Cuts
Much of the information found in this section is obtained from School Cuts. Please visit to School Cuts website if you wish to get involved in campaigning or wish to dig deeper into the data.

"91% OF SCHOOLS TO LOSE OUT UNDER THE GOVERNMENT’S SCHOOL FUNDING PROPOSALS"

Data Methodology for England
School Cuts looked at the core schools budget as it represents 75% of school spending. It should not be forgotten that all other areas of the education budget - early years, sixth form, pupil premium and high needs have all also been cut in real terms over the last two years.

They used the Schools block funding allocations for 2015 / 2016 as the baseline. This gives the per pupil funding for every mainstream school. We compared these with the funding amounts from the Government’s illustration of the impact of the NFF that was realised through the COLLECT system. Funding to cover PFI costs have been removed from all sums.

They used the Office for Budget Responsibility’s estimate for inflation for the period 2015 to 2020.

They assumed that local schools’ forums would implement the National Funding Formula as the Government has recommended.

All the data is available at https://bit.ly/school_cuts_data Andrew Baisley, 6th February 2018

Data Methodology for Wales
School Cuts used Welsh government data to calculate cuts to Welsh schools over this Parliament, 2015 — 2020.

Using the 2015/16 funding as the baseline, they calculated the impact of cost increases and pupil number increases on school funding.

The website uses the following assumptions in making its calculations:


 * That inflation for schools will amount to 8.7% over the lifetime of this Parliament. This figure is in “Financial sustainability of schools” published by the National Audit Office on 14 December 2016 (page 15) and applies equally to schools in Wales and England.
 * That funding for schools in Wales increases by 2.86% over this Parliament in line with the increase in Welsh Government revenue, but that pupil numbers in Welsh schools increase by 3.68% as predicted, leading to a reduction in funding per pupil over that period.
 * That the above changes in funding and pupil numbers are distributed equally among schools in Wales.

The website also assumes that Welsh councils do not provide additional funding for their schools from other areas of spending. Where any Welsh council does provide additional funding, the figures for schools in that council will be lower than our predicted figure.

All the figures are in 2016/17 prices. Andrew Baisley, 22nd March 2017