We believe that seeking to determine a formula for distribution at national level will be the most effective and transparent way of discovering where the most acute funding issues are emerging. Not continuing to develop a national distribution formula will merely mask the issues within the complexity and unfairness of 151 local formulae. A failure to follow through on developing a national funding formula will mean the current inequities of the system will be perpetuated.

Successive governments have recognised that the existing funding methodology is inequitable and means that similar schools with similar intakes are funded at a different levels merely because they are in different local authorities. A school’s funding level is determined by both the national distributional method from central to local government and the variations in the local formulae. It is therefore impossible to determine the exact level of financial difficulty that individual schools are now in without a detailed investigation into the budget of every school in the country.

Read the full response here.