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Dept for Education and Skills

Answer

Mr. Andrew Turner: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills what steps he took, in establishing formula spending share, to ensure that compensation for sparsity in the education formula did not benefit urban authorities with a large number of small primary schools; what proportion of the aggregate national education FSS allocation was distributed on the basis of sparsity; and if he will list the authorities which benefited from the education sparsity factor. [101547] Mr. Miliband: The issue of sparsity was addressed in three papers to the Education Formula Strategy Group. Sparsely populated authorities face higher costs as they have higher proportions of small schools than non- sparse authorities. The education formula uses sparsity as the funding factor, rather than the actual number of small schools so that authorities are compensated for the need they have, rather than the way they choose to organise their provision. Therefore urban authorities with a large number of small primary schools will not benefit from this factor. 1.8 per cent. (£440 million) of Education Formula Spending for 2003-04 was distributed on the basis of sparsity. The authorities that benefit are listed in order of decreasing sparsity: Isles of Scilly Herefordshire North Yorkshire Rutland Shropshire Lincolnshire Devon Wiltshire Cumbria Norfolk East Riding of Yorkshire Cornwall Northumberland Somerset Cambridgeshire Dorset Suffolk North Lincolnshire Oxfordshire Gloucestershire West Berkshire Isle of Wight Council Warwickshire Bedfordshire Northamptonshire Buckinghamshire East Sussex Derbyshire Leicestershire Durham Doncaster Cheshire Staffordshire Hampshire Essex Worcestershire Nottinghamshire North Somerset Kent South Gloucestershire West Sussex Lancashire Windsor and Maidenhead The Wrekin Darlington Milton Keynes Bath and North East Somerset Peterborough Wokingham Redcar and Cleveland Calderdale Hertfordshire North East Lincolnshire Kirklees Surrey Swindon York Solihull Rotherham Stockton-on-Tees Medway Knowsley Barnsley Hartlepool Thurrock Blackburn Leeds Bradford Oldham Wakefield Bracknell Forest St. Helens Sheffield Gateshead City of London Halton Warrington Bromley

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

101547; 401 c165-6W

Session

2002-03

Subjects

Finance Education Distribution Local education authorities Primary education Population Urban areas

Link

View this Written question on www.publications.parliament.uk