By the numbers: More money for free schools

Free schools have been claiming a bigger and bigger share of the total pot of money for new school places – and this trend is set to accelerate in the years ahead
17th March 2017, 12:00am
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By the numbers: More money for free schools

https://www.tes.com/magazine/archived/numbers-more-money-free-schools

Free schools are taking up an increasing proportion of government funding to create new school places.

In the first year of the programme, 2010-11, free-school spending represented 0.1 per cent of the total, but by 2015-16, it had risen to more than 47 per cent.

According to a National Audit Office analysis of Department for Education data, free schools are set to account for more than half of government funding for new school places in four of the next five years.

This trend is set to accelerate in the future, with chancellor Philip Hammond announcing more funding for free schools in last week’s Budget.

New grammar schools

Controversially, the government wants them to include a new generation of grammar schools. Critics have also argued that free schools are not always opened where the need for places is most acute.

The £320 million package is designed to fund 30 new free schools in England, which the government says will open by September 2020. It is part of a £380 million package for the whole of the UK.

The funding will also be used to pay some of the pre-opening costs of some of the 110 extra free schools that the government intends to open in the next Parliament.

And as TES revealed, documents released after the chancellor made his Budget speech show that he has allocated another £655 million for school building for 2021-22 (bit.ly/FreeSchoolfund). This second package includes money which will be transferred to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland under the Barnett Formula, the mechanism used to calculate the amounts of public expenditure allocated to the devolved nations.

That is expected to leave about an extra £550 million to be spent on free schools, some of which may be selective, in England.

It is believed that further funding for the programme may be allocated in later years.


@geomr

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