Funding for all state schools in England could soon be decided by Whitehall rules, officials have said. The Department for Education is considering introducing a "national funding formula" to decide the allocation of school budgets. Officials said this did not mean local authorities, currently responsible for allocating funds, would be sidelined. The proposals will be in the forthcoming education White Paper, the Financial Times reports.
Ministers are planning to consult with councils about the level of their involvement in the construction and operation of the formula, and officials stressed the government wanted to work closely with them. The consultation is expected to take at least one year to complete. The move follows government concerns that many local council formulas currently used to decide how to allocate the so-called dedicated schools grant are out of date and do not recognise changes in schools in recent years.
Officials said Education Secretary Michael Gove believed too often two schools in different areas, but with similar intakes of children, were getting different levels of funding. Speaking to the Financial Times, he said the current system was "opaque and illogical" and needed levelling out. Ministers are said to want budgets to more closely reflect pupils' needs and head teachers' priorities.
BBC education correspondent Tom Symonds said the proposals were radical and controversial. "This is like saying all schools will, in some ways, be freed from local authority control," he said. "Michael Gove's idea is to devolve power to schools but many people will see it as bringing much more power back to the centre because it will be a national system."
Symonds said he expected local councils across England to be "very upset" at losing the ability to set priorities at a local level. He added that the plans would mean lots of schools would see changes in their funding. "In some places, that will be something that's welcomed. In inner cities, deprived schools are seen to do quite well, as opposed to deprived schools in rural areas."
