Ensuring equality of opportunity for all our young people is essential and needs to be backed up with the funding to make it happen.
It is right that we are seeing greater investment in our schools, with an extra £2 billion over the next two years.
The extra support is going to deliver the highest real terms spending on schools in history by 2024-25.
A typical primary school with some 200 pupils will receive around an extra £28,000, with £170,000 for a typical secondary school with 900 pupils.
Per pupil average funding for mainstream schools is going to increase, by approximately five per cent overall in 2023-24, compared to the current financial year. Local authorities will receive an additional £400 million to boost high needs budgets, to assist in supporting children with special educational needs or disabilities.
The Department for Education is introducing measures to help attract teachers for the 2023-24 academic year. These include tax-free bursaries worth £27,000 and tax-free scholarships worth £29,000, to encourage talented trainees into subjects such as chemistry, computing, mathematics and physics. Support is also available for modern foreign languages graduates going into teaching.
From autumn 2022 the Levelling Up Premium, worth up to £3,000 tax-free for mathematics, physics, chemistry, and computing teachers in the first five years of their careers, is available to those who choose to work in disadvantaged schools. Recruitment and retention of specialist teachers in these subjects is vital and will support schools.
School leaders are receiving help to invest in high quality teaching and tutoring.
More than two million tutoring courses have now been started. An extra £24 million is boosting children’s literacy skills to support those negatively affected by Covid-19, in addition to £60 million this year and next for the Maths Hub Programme.
We are all feeling the effects of global cost of living pressures and our schools and colleges are no different. I welcome confirmation of £500 million of further support for energy efficiency upgrades for schools and colleges to help them save on bills.
This backing will help our schools and colleges to save money on bills by putting in better heating controls, installing insulation to reduce heat loss from pipes, or switching to energy efficient lighting.
Of course, this initiative will not only help schools and colleges save money, but they will become more energy efficient and have enhanced winter resilience for the future.
A primary school will receive, on average, around £16,000, with approximately £42,000 for secondary schools. Further education college groups are to receive around £290,000.
This investment in young people will help them go on to achieve their full potential.
Henry Smith MP
