To have to get this off my chest?

[nameuschangeus]

I am a parent governor of a large primary school. At our last meeting we were told that the government is planning on re-writing the rules on how LA's are allowed to fund their schools. It is apparently with LA's currently asking for their opinions prior to the plan being publicly announced, and as such we were sworn to secrecy not talking to anyone about it. However the unfairness of it is gnawing away at me and I wanted to put it on here to hear some other views than my own.

Basically as I understand it the government will still give each LA the same amount of funding as they currently do BUT the LA has to divide the funding equally between all schools! Which means the local village primary with 30 pupils will get the same as the city primary with 600 pupils.

I questioned if they has got this explanation right but was assured by both the head and the chair (and 2 other governors) who had been to the meeting called by the LA that this is what they are proposing. The head even says that he had spoken to heads of smaller schools who are cock-a-hoop at the massive rise in funding they will get if this idea goes through.

Please I don't want people saying aibu for putting something on here that I was told should be confidential. I know I am wrong in that.

I want to know if anyone else had heard about this and what people's thoughts are on the subject please.

Well, that can't possibly per true unless you mean per pupil and not per school.

It's just impossible.

I would assume that they've got the wrong end of the stick. It's not been raised in any of our recent meetings and I would assume that the funding is still allocated per pupil and not per school. That would be grossly unfair.

well either this is your idea of a wind-up, or you have misunderstood something somewhere along the line.....

OF COURSE they can't give schools equal money, how could that EVER work!

Our smallest local primary has 83 pupils, and the largest has 750 - that would mean almost 10x the amount of money per child in the smaller school compared to the bigger, and the bigger is likely to have 10x more staff, for starters, never mind 10x more of all the consumables etc etc

Interesting, as I heard a similar rumour that there were odd funding changes about to happen here. So just marking the thread.

Could they mean equal money relative to the size of the school? Rather than just 'equal' money?

I don't see how it would work. Some primary schools have fewer than 100 pupils and others have more than 400.

It doesn't make sense.

Is it this this

Haven't read it all but it's not saying that funding will be the same in all schools.

Honestly not a wind up.

True that I might have got the wrong end of the stick and there may be some leeway with pupil premium money but I questioned it and questioned it and the answer I kept getting was 'same money to all schools'. I would be thrilled if I had got it wrong

it is x amount per pupil iirc

Thanks tweasels I'll have a read of that.

I've just remembered that they said something about the LA having to choose a specific number of criteria it would be able to allocate funding against.

Our LA has a massive number if small schools and this seemed to he relevant. The figure we would be loosing (600+ pupils) would be around £160k, the figure an early village school (28 pupils) would be gaining was £62k.

Sorry, don't mean to drip feed but just remembered the bit about the LA choosing criteria to fund against.

it might not be that you have the wrong end of the stick name; but maybe the people relying the information to you has?

Shamelessly bumping for the evening crowd