1. Will the Minister make a statement on the formula used to allocate school funding? OAQ53579

Thank you, Hefin. Each local authority is responsible for determining how much funding is allocated to each individual school. School budgets are determined by a local funding formula and authorities must consult their schools budget forums and all schools in their area when setting or making changes to a funding formula.

Last week, I hosted a drop-in event for Assembly Members on behalf of various teaching unions, including the National Education Union. Teachers who attended told me that they were concerned that cuts in UK Government funding are having a direct impact on their ability to implement the education reforms, including, for example, the Additional Learning Needs and Education Tribunal (Wales) Act 2018. They argue that the school funding formula needs to be more equitable and reflect current challenges. And in your response to the Conservatives' debate on this subject, you acknowledged that how schools are funded can actually be quite confusing, and you indicated that you're not opposed in principle to the funding formula being changed. That's to be welcomed and, with that in mind, would you now commit to a regular and ongoing dialogue with local authorities, regional consortia, the teaching unions and the teaching profession in order to look at how these issues can be addressed, and how we can make the most of these difficult circumstances in the face of ongoing austerity?  

Of course, Hefin, that dialogue continues every day in my department. Only last week, senior officials of the education department were meeting with the Association of School and College Leaders to discuss with them their concerns. I continue to challenge both regional consortia and local authorities with regard to ensuring that as much money as possible reaches the front line of our education system in individual schools. And I am always open to discussions as to how best we can ensure that more money makes it into individual school budgets.

Of course, the vast majority of school budgets arrive out of the revenue support grant for individual local authorities, and I am aware that the distribution sub-group of local government are currently looking and have started a new stream of work to look at how indicator-based assessment levels of education are completed when determining levels of RSG, and I welcome that work indeed. Both myself and the previous local government Minister and the new local government Minister have said, if local authorities come forward with ideas of how to change the funding formula, we will work with them in good faith and we will continue to do that. It is confusing often for people to see how money gets to schools because of the different layers of funding that are available, but my aim always has been, when I was an opposition Member, and it certainly is now that I am the education Minister, to get as much money to the front line to individual school budgets as possible.  

Minister, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, evidence suggests that differences in local funding models are causing concerns about unequal treatment of schools in similar circumstances. They went on to call on the Welsh Government to consider reviewing the school funding model if it is to realise its ambition for equity in education and student well-being. Minister, the National Association of Headteachers Cymru have said that the current funding system is not fit for purpose—their words, not mine. What action will you take to address these inequalities in the school funding formula in Wales, please?  

Oscar, it is important that local authorities are responsible for school funding in Wales, and that is set out in law. I'm not sure if the Member is advocating removing that power away from our colleagues in local government. I certainly think that our partners in local government would take a very strong view about removing that power from them. It's also important to realise that there is not a free-for-all for local authorities with regard to how they set their individual funding formulas within a local authority. The regulations require 70 per cent of funding for schools budgets to be distributed on the basis of the number of pupils in the school, and authorities have the leeway of 30 per cent to be able to adjust to individual circumstances.

I do hear that maybe what you're hinting at is that we have a single funding formula and a single figure to fund education across Wales. On the face of it, I can see why there is an attractiveness to that, but when we consider the great diversity of the Welsh education system—a system that delivers bilingually, a system that delivers for large city-centre schools with a diverse population, many children coming to our schools that don't have English as a first language, to those very, very small rural schools where it is inevitable that the cost of education will be more expensive given the size of those schools—it perhaps is not so easy to come up with a single figure that actually covers the educational needs of Wales's very varied communities and the great diversity that we have in our education system. But I'm always open to Members' suggestions as to what changes they want to see to the formula, whether they want to see more money spent on deprivation or rurality or bilingualism, but, of course, that has to be done in the envelope that is available to us, and I don't see anybody standing up in this Chamber offering up money from their schools to be given to other people's schools.