§ 18. Mr. Andrew TurnerTo ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills what percentage of money provided to schools by her Department is allocated to specific purposes and activities. [56363]
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§ Mr. TimmsRecurrent funding for schools is channelled through local education authorities and is made up of Education Standard Spending, the Standards Fund, the Schools Standards Grant and other special grants.
Education Standard Spending is the amount the Government consider appropriate for local authorities to spend on education from their total budgets and is not ring-fenced for specific purposes or activities. In addition, the School Standards Grant is paid to schools to be used by them as they wish to raise standards.
LEAs and schools receive Standards Fund Grant for particular specific purposes and activities such as the literacy and numeracy strategies. Other special grants are paid to schools to support payments to teachers passing the threshold and performance pay for teachers. Schools also receive funding via education action zones for particular purposes. Taken together these account for 11.7 per cent. of recurrent education funding for LEAs and schools. Of this, around half is devolved to schools from the Standards Fund for them to spend on their own priorities within the broad objectives of the Standards Fund programme.
Capital funding for schools is provided through a combination of credit approvals, Government grant, and through the Private Finance Initiative. Around 45 per cent. of capital funding is allocated for specific purposes or activities.
§ 31. Mr. HendryTo ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills what extra funding she has made available to schools with classes of 8, 9 and 10-year-olds containing more than 30 children in the last 12 months. [56376]
§ Mr. TimmsIn 2001–02 we made up to £73 million available to local education authorities to make progress on class sizes at Key Stage 2. We estimate that this has paid for around 500 additional teachers and 500 new classrooms.