3. Will the Minister provide an update on educational funding per pupil in Wales? OAQ54583

According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies analysis, spending per pupil in Wales is just below £6,000 on average. However, this varies considerably between local authorities, reflecting differences in deprivation and sparsity, as well as choices made by individual local authorities in line with their responsibilities for setting school budgets.

Minister, in the last 10 years, pupil spending per pupil has fallen £500, which is almost 10 per cent. Schools are really struggling financially. They're in a position where they're going to have to be laying staff off. So, as the Minister for Education in Wales, with that backdrop and with that crisis in funding, how can you justify your Government's position and what are you going to do about the problem?

As I have just explained to Mohammad Asghar, later on this afternoon we will have an opportunity to debate the findings of the CYPE report. I don't want to pre-empt that debate, but the Member will be aware that I've accepted all the recommendations of that report, including its main recommendation, which is to establish an independent review into education funding in Wales, examining the role of the Welsh Government, the middle tier, the local authorities, who have the main responsibility for funding schools, and how we can ensure that we know that enough funding is getting into our education system and that, in the way in which that money is spent, it is used adequately.

Minister, of course, the amount per pupil goes up marginally every time there's an announcement of a rise in teachers' pay and pensions. I was very grateful to you for your statement yesterday. I wonder whether you can just confirm that the £12.8 million that you mentioned in that statement is part of the £14 million mentioned last year, or whether it's coming from a completely different source. I'm sure you'll agree that the £195 million announced from the UK Government in the spending round will actually make this easier, going forward, as well, particularly as teachers' pay has now been devolved.

I just want to go back to the question Paul Davies raised with you. You, of course, have no control over this money once it hits the revenue support grant. I'm wondering what steps you will take against councils who don't actually pass this money on to schools, particularly as there's a risk that if they don't do so they will continue to lose teachers, let alone see schools affected by the wider points that, actually, Neil McEvoy was making.

Okay. So, the money that was announced yesterday, the £12.8 million in-year to support local authorities with the costs of implementing the teachers' pay rise, is new money, in addition, being made available by my colleague the finance Minister. It should be said that we have received not a single penny of consequentials from the Westminster Government to pay for the teachers' pay rise, because in England it has been paid out of a £50 million underspend within that departmental budget. Going forward, I and the Minister for local government have had conversations with colleagues in local government about the need to spend this additional money on its intended purposes, i.e. support for teachers' pay. My understanding is that both of us have received assurances from local authorities that that money will be spent for that purpose.

I believe education needs a greater proportion of the Welsh budget, and that a highly educated workforce is the best economic development tool we can have. On the additional money announced for the teachers' pay award, which you announced yesterday, is it going to be distributed via the funding formula to local authorities and then on to schools, which will produce winners and losers, or allocated to schools to meet the increased costs on a cost basis? It does make a huge difference which way you do it, because if you do it by just putting it in the formula, you'll have winners and losers amongst local authorities and winners and losers amongst schools.

I agree with you, Mike, with regard to the importance of investing in education. It is an investment; it's not a cost. If we want to develop the high skills that we will need for a successful economy in the future, the best thing that we can do is invest in our children and in those who work with them every day. The allocation is agreed between us and the local authorities, and will be done on the basis of their fair share of that additional £12.8 million that we've been able to make available to them.