The Department of Education are currently consulting on changes to how annual budgets for schools are calculated.
Whilst we do believe the current system is in need of urgent reform, the suggested changes which the Department have now proposed, we believe, will only make an unequal system more imbalanced.
Whilst at last it would appear that the Department of Education has recognised the failures with the current funding model, by deciding to take money away from schools with lower rates of free school entitlement, for example, to pay those with higher levels is fundamentally unfair
John O'Dowd has revealed that he hopes to have the raft of new changes in place by April 2014. You can access the consultation document here
Indicative data is now available on how the proposals would have translated into individual school budgets this year had the changes already been implemented.
You can see the impact the changes would have on your local schools, broken down by Education & Library Board area, by clicking on the links below.
Please note that these indicative figures are based on all proposed changes including a split Common Funding Formula, the removal of VAT funding from the Formula and an additional £10m targeted at social deprivation.
Ulster Unionist Education Spokesperson, Danny Kinahan MLA, has criticised the move labelling it senseless to take funds away from schools already on tight budgets to give to others.
Over the summer months Danny wrote to every school in Northern Ireland to inform them that the Department was proposing to change the Common Funding Scheme and ask what impact the changes to funding would have on them. The responses were frightening – but an overall trend quickly developed; spending on the pupils will be scaled back and staff will be laid off if the current proposals are allowed to go ahead.
We would urge all schools, parents and the wider community to respond to this consultation, which runs until the 18h October, and call for a new formula which does create one problem to fix another.