The government has announced that £105 million will be spent over four years on 15 new special free schools, as part of plans set out in today’s Spring Budget.
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt announced the move as part of a public sector productivity plan aimed at delivering up to £1.8 billion worth of savings overall by 2029.
Mr Hunt also used his Budget speech to highlight the UK’s performance in international education rankings, and to reference an outburst by education minister Gillian Keegan that she later apologised for.
Treasury documents published after his statement say cuts to national insurance will save the “average teacher on £44,300” an extra £1,250 per year.
On the 15 special free schools announced today, Mr Hunt told Parliament: ”Special education need provisions can be excellent when outsourced to independent sector schools but also expensive, so we’ll invest £105 million over the next four years to build 15 new special needs free schools to create additional high-quality places and increase choice for parents.”
And reaction to today’s announcement has been muted.
Julie McCulloch, director of policy at the Association of School and College Leaders, said a building programme for special schools was “welcome but does not address the wider crisis in special educational needs funding”.
She added: “A public sector productivity plan - whatever that actually is - will not pay the bills for schools and colleges any time soon.”
In August last year the DfE announced that it was creating seven new special free schools. This was in addition to 33 special free schools announced previously.
Separate to the Budget, the Department for Education today confirmed the locations of 20 alternative provision (AP) free schools being established.
Keegan doing ‘effing good job’
Speaking in the Commons today, Mr Hunt also referred to the “biggest ever expansion of childcare” announced last year.
“Our plan will mean an extra 60,000 parents enter the workforce in the next four years, a tremendous achievement for the education secretary, who I think is doing an effing good job.” This referred to comments that Ms Keegan famously made off camera last year.
Pisa rankings
The chancellor also highlighted the UK’s performance in the most recent Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) rankings. He said: “In 2010 schools in the UK were behind Germany, France and Sweden in the OECD’s Pisa education rankings for reading and maths. Now, after Conservative reforms, we are ahead of them.”
National insurance ‘saving for teachers’
Today the chancellor confirmed reports of a further 2p cut to national insurance, from 10 per cent to 8 per cent from 6 April.
The Treasury says that this cut will mean “an average teacher on £44,300 will receive an annual gain of over £1,250”.
But Daniel Kebede, general secretary of the NEU teaching union, said that Mr Hunt, with his Budget announcement today, had “turned his back on the teacher and support staff recruitment and retention crisis, the record class sizes, the decrepit state of our school buildings”.
The chancellor wanted schools “to just keep doing more and more with less and less. And it’s just not sustainable”, he added.
Last year the DfE said it would increase school funding through the national funding formula by 2.7 per cent for 2024-25 - but it later revised this figure down to 1.9 per cent after an error was discovered in the processing of pupil numbers. Unions said this revision equated to £370 million less funding.
Lack of tutoring funding ‘a disgrace’
As expected, the chancellor has not announced funding to extend the National Tutoring Programme and 16-19 Tuition Fund, in what tutoring groups called a “disappointing day for education”.
“The NTP and 16-19 Tuition Fund had taken huge steps towards making tutoring accessible to all who need it, not just the wealthy,” said Action Tutoring, Get Further and The Tutor Trust in a joint statement.
The groups warned that the government’s decision not to continue funding the programme, which ran for three years, will mean “young people from low-income backgrounds will miss out”.
Former education secretary Lord David Blunkett called the decision a “disgrace”, adding that “it will mean that tens of thousands of youngsters will lose out at a time when attendance levels are damaging the future of so many”.
His concerns were echoed by Nick Brook, chair of the DfE’s Strategic Tutoring Advisory Group, who said that cutting funding “will tilt the playing field further in favour of the better off”.
“With the attainment gap standing at a 10-year high, it beggars belief that the government thinks now is the right time to withdraw funding for tutoring, just as evaluations were proving its worth,” Mr Brook added.
Non-dom tax status
The chancellor also confirmed that he will abolish the “non-dom” system that lets foreign nationals avoid paying UK tax on money made overseas, replacing it with a “modern, simpler and fairer residency-based system”.
Abolishing the non-dom tax status is a key Labour policy, which it planned to use to fund its education policies, along with removing the VAT exemption from independent schools.
Violence reduction
Today’s Budget document also states that the government is committing £75 million over three years, from 2025 onwards, to expand the Violence Reduction Unit model across England and Wales.
“Violence Reduction Units enable local public services such as health boards, schools and police leaders to coordinate their joint strategy to tackle serious violence among young people, preventing violent crime and reducing burdens on healthcare, schools and criminal justice,” the document says.
Alternative provision
The 20 new alternative provision (AP) schools whose locations were confirmed today will create over 1,600 additional AP places across England as part of the Spending Review 2021 commitment to a capital investment of £2.6 billion in high-needs provision, the government stated today.
It says this will support early intervention, helping to improve outcomes for children requiring alternative provision, and helping them to fulfil their potential.
Here are the confirmed locations of new AP free schools:
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