Anthony Roper Primary School and the funding issue

The recent letter from the Chair of Governors of Anthony Roper Primary School in Eynsford highlighting the school's difficult funding position and asking parents to contribute to support the school has drawn a lot of local and media attention. The BBC Sunday Politics carried a report on it, talking to parents and also interviewing both Sir Michael Fallon MP and me (and in this I wear two hats - as local Member and with my KCC Education portfolio. Perhaps I should add a third, since both my children attended the school).

There are three major factors at work in the pressures faced by the school:

•  ARPS is one of the lower-funded primary schools in Sevenoaks (by one measure of per pupil funding, 37th out of 42). This reflects chiefly the way in which funding (which Kent receives from government in the form of Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG)) is allocated, much of it driven by factors related to deprivation. ARPS has relatively few pupils who meet these criteria. In addition, all schools get a 'lump sum' (in Kent, of £120,000) regardless of their size. As a relatively large primary school, ARPS has to spread this sum over more pupils

• Kent is one of the poorer-funded local authorities in the country; in the current financial year, we ranked 143rd out of 152. We have long campaigned as part of the f40 group of lower-funded local authorities for a change in the system; this has had some effect with the introduction of what is (rather misleadingly) called a 'National Funding Formula', currently being phased in. This has offered some help and improvement to Kent, but more to secondary schools than primaries, and is in any case only a very partial step in the right direction

• Nationally, schools funding has been tight since 2010 (and especially since 2015). More money has gone into the DSG, but the number of pupils has also increased, so money per pupil has been flat in cash terms, leaving schools under pressure as costs rise. In addition, like many local authorities, Kent has had to transfer DSG funds from the Schools Block (which meets most day to day needs of schools) to the High Needs Block, which supports children with more extensive Special Educational Needs and has been growing rapidly since the enactment of the Children and Families Act 2014

With government set to review its priorities with a new Comprehensive Spending Review (the last year of the current CSR is 2019-20) there is clearly a strong case to be made for schools - but also for areas like Kent to get a greater share of the resources available. I sit on the Member Board of f40, and we will continue to press government to move beyond the current National Funding Formula.

You can findmy more detailed analysis of these funding issues via this link.