Below is a letter about the proposed national funding changes for schools. Far from improving the historic underfunding for Cambridgeshire schools, the proposed changes will leave our schools, including Mayfield, struggling to cover basic operating costs.

Please help us secure fairer funding for your children by replying to the government consultation and/or writing to Justine Greening (Secretary of State for Education). Full details of how to do this are in the letter and accompanying attachments.

Many thanks for your help.
Mrs Hill

 

15 March 2017

Dear Parents and Carers,

We are writing to you about how the proposed changes to school funding would affect schools in Cambridgeshire, and in particular, how they will affect Mayfield Primary School.

The Government have been consulting on a new National Funding Formula for schools. At the moment there is a huge difference in the amount of funding that schools in different parts of the country receive. The government said that the new formula would make funding fairer. Cambridgeshire has long been one of the worst funded education authorities in the country; we have been campaigning for fairer funding for years. We had expected to see a large increase in our funding.

An Unfair Outcome for Cambridgeshire and Mayfield Primary School
However instead of making funding fairer, the current proposals mean our children will get much less money spent on their education than most other children in the country.

  • Although we will see a small increase in our school budget this will be quickly eroded by needing to fund new national requirements such as the apprenticeship levy.
  • Almost one third of primary schools in Cambridgeshire will actually see their funding fall
  • Small schools will be particularly badly hit
  • The average amount of funding per pupil in Cambridgeshire will be £340 less per pupil than the national average.
  • That amounts to £10,200 less funding than the national average for every class of thirty children. This is enough to pay for a teaching assistant to work in every class every morning and half of every afternoon;
  • If Mayfield received funding to the national average, we would receive £130,169 more per year. This would be enough to pay for additional teachers, teaching assistants, repairs and maintenance, access resources such as mental health counselling– this would be a significant increase for us and would benefit all the children.
  • Cambridgeshire would still receive £2,451 less for every child than the highest funded local authority.

We believe that the Government has fundamentally failed to address this unfairness.

Furthermore, Cambridgeshire’s funding would rise on average just 1.8% at a time when the Institute for Fiscal Studies are predicting that costs to schools will rise by 8% by 2020. We believe that this poses a real threat to the quality of education that our children will receive.

What Needs to Change
We are therefore calling on the Government to review its funding formula so that all children can have a good education that is properly and fairly funded. We want the government to make these three changes:

  1. Schools cannot function if funding does not cover their basic operating costs. The formula needs to increase the basic amount of funding that every pupil in the country receives to cover these costs.
  2. Protect small schools by having a bigger lump sum of funding for every school. Cambridgeshire used to give every school £150,000. The proposed new formula gives just £110,000
  3. Remaining funding can then be used to target issues such as poverty and deprivation.

What You Can Do to Help
Our local MPs are supporting our campaign. You can help us by:

  • Writing to Justine Greening, the Secretary of State for Education. You can use the model letter attached if you wish.
  • Responding to the funding consultation by visiting: https://consult.education.gov.uk/funding-policy-unit/schools-national-funding-formula2/
  • You may think that responding to such consultations achieves very little. We are assured that this is not the case, i.e. numbers do count. It is absolutely vital that the voice of Cambridgeshire is not lost when all local authorities in England are arguing for additional funding, including those in better funded areas. The questions in the consultation are quite technical. You can view our response to the consultation by referring to the attached documents or visiting our school website. Our responses are suggestions for you to use if you wish. The consultation closes on 22 March 2017.

Other actions to support our campaign are being considered. We will keep you up to date about how the campaign is progressing and let you know if there is anything else you can do to help.

In Cambridgeshire we have been working in very tight financial conditions compared with most other authorities for many years to provide a good quality of education. We will of course continue to do so, but that does not mean the proposed system is fair and should not be changed.

Thank you for your support.

Yours sincerely,
Jaspaul Hill
Headteacher

Model Letter to Justine Greening  Mayfield Response to High Needs Funding Consultation  Mayfield Response to National Funding Consultation