Headteachers have warned that plans to reform school funding could be delayed by a year because of the snap general election.

Ministers have said that the national schools funding formula would remove the “postcode lottery” which sees schools in different parts of the country receive widely different levels of funding per pupil.

The plans, which were a Conservative manifesto commitment in 2015, have proved controversial, with more than 9,000 schools likely to see their funding cut, while more than 10,000 would likely see an increase.

The change was due to come in at a time when schools already have to make £3 billion of savings by 2019-20, according to the National Audit Office.

Valentine Mulholland, head of policy at the NAHT headteachers’ union, said the union had worked for “very many years” for the introduction of a national funding formula.

Speaking today at the start of the union’s conference in Telford, she said: “The policy that is at risk [because of the election announcement] - and that would be a concern - is the national funding formula.”

The government’s consultation on its plans closed on 22 March, and the new system is due to be introduced from 2018.

Formula ‘is still the thing to do’

Ms Mulholland said that “the delay due to the pre-election period and the election means that it would be very unlikely that [the government] would come out with a position on the national funding formula by the summer term, which means that even if the government, whichever government it is, does remain committed to the national funding formula, it is highly likely that it would be pushed back by a year.”

She added that the national funding formula “is still the thing to do because trying to work with 132 formulae across the country is a completely inconsistent approach to how you are funded, and it’s unfair”.

School funding is set to dominate this weekend’s conference, with the union listing “funding education fully and fairly” as its top election priority, and calling for the government to provide “enough money to make the new national funding formula a success”.

Today, the NAHT’s incoming president, Anne Lyons, is expected to say that the government’s argument that schools can plug the funding gap with efficiencies is “offensive”.

That view was echoed by outgoing president, Kim Johnson, the head of a complex needs school in Kent, who said that being told to save money by renegotiating his photocopier contract was “insulting” and “quite bonkers”.

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