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Schools: Funding Reform

My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement. I heartily welcome the fact that the Government are grasping the nettle of the complexity and unfairness of school funding, which the previous Government did not do in 13 years—indeed, they compounded the complexity problems. First, I will say a word about capital funding. I notice from the Statement that the Secretary of State has accepted Mr Sebastian James's recommendation to move towards greater standardisation of design of school buildings. Casting my mind back to the debate during the Localism Bill, I am sure the Government would not want a set of cloned schools all over the country. Can the Minister confirm that there will be a set of standard designs from which local communities can chose the most appropriate for their particular needs, not just one size fits all? That would not be in line with what this Government are trying to achieve. Will he also say whether energy efficiency, including microgeneration, will be included in those standard designs because, moving forward, that is going to be a very important issue? On revenue, I welcome the consultation on moving towards a fairer national funding formula with appropriate room for local discretion—that is particularly important to those of us on these Benches—and the move towards a simpler, fairer and more transparent system. Schools need to know what to expect. From what the Minister said, I am sure he accepts that if you have a very simple system, it is likely not to be very fair, and if it is a very fair system, it is likely to have some complexity. I am sure that the Government's consultation will allow for that. I also particularly welcome the Government's determination to iron out the inequalities between areas and between academies and local authority schools. On the subject of academies, I welcome the fact that the Government are publishing a consultation document for local authorities explaining the basis on which they intend that the money will be deducted this year and next. Does this mean that local authorities with no academies will have no deductions? Does it mean that there will be a standard costing for the services that academies will provide which local authorities will no longer provide? Finally, will he tell us a little more about how special schools will be treated?