HC Deb 03 April 1995 vol 257 cc919-20W
Mr. Clifton-Brown

To ask the Secretary of State for Education what top-slice percentage was held-back by each local education authority for the administrative services undertaken on behalf of grant-maintained schools for the last year for which figures are available. [17370]

Mr. Robin Squire

Grant-maintained schools are themselves responsible for their own administration. Local education authorities have certain continuing responsibilities for all pupils, whether at grant-maintained or LEA schools. These include home-to-school transport, the education welfare service, and support for pupils with statements of special educational need. The cost of these services in relation to GM school pupils is not collated centrally. However, in the areas where GM secondary schools' budgets are determined by the common funding formula, the percentage of the schools' standard spending assessment attributed to LEA continuing responsibilities in 1995–96 is set out in the table.

Per cent.
Barnet 16.36
Brent 18.12
Bromley 16.87
Calderdale 13.55
Cambridgeshire 16.54
Croydon 18.23
Cumbria 16.17
Ealing 23.03
Enfield 18.99
Essex 16.97
Gloucestershire 20.73
Hertfordshire 15.64
Hillingdon 17.42
Kent 17.10
Kingston 18.61
Lambeth 25.62
Lincolnshire 23.90
Surrey 18.30
Sutton 17.26
Walsall 14.52
Wandsworth 23.60
Wiltshire 16.10

Mrs. Gorman

To ask the Secretary of State for Education if she will calculate how much extra money per pupil would reach schools in each local education authority if all schools in that local education authority were grant-maintained compared with the position in which none is grant-maintained, in the most recent year for which information is available. [17148]

Mr. Robin Squire

The information requested cannot readily be calculated. However, the Government remain committed to ensuring that grant-maintained schools receive funding to reflect their additional responsibilities compared with local education authority schools.

In the case of annual maintenance grant, individual secondary LEA schools in authorities in which the common funding formula operates can obtain from the Funding Agency for Schools detailed information on what their budgets for 1995–96 would have been as grant-maintained schools.

Other LEA secondary schools, and all LEA primary schools, can calculate very closely what their budgets for 1995–96 would have been as grant-maintained schools by increasing their budget shares resulting from their LEA's local management of schools scheme by the relevant percentage for central costs, and estimating a level of subsidy for the provision of school meals consistent with the LEA's policy.

Details of this and of the arrangements for special purpose and capital grants to grant-maintained schools are included in the Department's "Grant-Maintained Schools Funding Worksheet," the 1995–96 version of which will be circulated to schools later this month.