Advice for Schools: How to Spend your Government-Allocated Funding
Posted by EYR Team on 11th Sep 2023
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This blog has been put together to provide a bit of guidance for the new financial year in your setting. Whilst each school will, of course, have their own specific needs, long-term goals and plans for funding, in this blog we will share some guidance that we hope will be useful for all. Here, we will break down the 2023 funding allocation, offer advice on planning your spending, share useful information and offer some of our top tips from speaking to educators.
School Funding - The Basics
Funding is calculated using the National Funding Formula (NFF). This ensures that all budgets are set using the same set of criteria but does not mean that all schools receive the same budget. The following factors are taken into consideration:
- Basic entitlement: dependent on the number of pupils and per-pupil rate
- Deprivation: based on factors such as free school meal allocation
- Per-pupil funding
- Low prior attainment: optional additional funding for schools with pupils not achieving the expected standards
- Looked after children: referring to children in local authority care
- English as an additional language (EAL): based on the number of EAL pupils
- Pupil mobility: refers to the proportion of pupils joining on a non-standard start date
- Sparsity: schools that are unable to share resources due to size or isolation
- Lump sum: a fixed and equal lump sum decided by the local authorities
- London fringe: applicable only to Buckinghamshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Kent and West Sussex
- Split sites: additional support for schools that have unavoidable extra costs due to being across split sites
- Rates: varying local rates such as energy
- PFI contracts: private finance initiatives
- Exceptional circumstances: factors related to school premises such as listed buildings, hire of PE facilities etc
According to the latest government data – the mainstream per pupil funding will increase by an average of 5% for 2023-2024 compared to 2022-2023. This equates to around a 2% increase per pupil which is approximately £28,000 for a typical mainstream primary school with around 200 pupils.
Initial Planning
To start your initial planning it can be useful to prioritise certain areas of the school. Across all school types, the following 4 spending priorities were identified:
- Teaching staff: including supply staff and other staffing costs
- Back office: administrative supplies and costs
- Premises: buildings, maintenance, cleaning and caretaking
- Learning resources: all costs related to physical and digital learning resources
Once your top priorities have been accurately identified, it is a case of further prioritising the details of these to be able to allocate your funding accordingly.
How to Make the Most of your Funding - Top Tips
1. Open-ended Resources
Purchasing resources can be extremely costly, especially if you want to guarantee quality and longevity. To reduce some of these costs, it can be effective to look for products that are open-ended and versatile thus allowing use in more than one context, negating the need to purchase additional resources.
Some great examples of open-ended resources are items such as loose parts. Loose parts can be used in a multitude of different ways, for example for counting and sorting, construction, imaginative play and physical development to name a few.
Another great example is the classic tuff tray. Providing a base for all manner of activities, a tuff tray is a fantastically adaptable resource that can be repurposed time and again for different areas of learning.
Finally, where it is not always necessary to be able to get such an open-ended resource as loose parts, it is beneficial to seek out products that are neutral, with no specific theme or design. One such example is the open-ended doll house. Designed to be a blank canvas, this “doll house” could easily convert into any imaginative play or learning base that you or your little ones choose.
2. Reusable Classroom Resources
Our second top tip is investing in items that can be reused over and over again. One such example is reusable worksheets. If your school does not have the funding for certain technology like tablets and iPads, you may feel limited to using only paper. Wipe-clean worksheet pockets are great for preserving paperwork so that they can be used over and over again.
Similarly, it helps to think outside the box when it comes to things like classroom essentials. Reusing other items such as bottles, crates and food packaging to store classroom essentials is a great way to retain your budget for other items and is an easy way to introduce sustainability into your setting simultaneously.
3. Cheaper Alternatives
Finding cheaper alternatives might sound like the obvious option however sometimes all it takes is to shop around to be able to save the pennies. Many suppliers will often have bulk saver deals or a “value range” that showcases their more affordable alternatives for your everyday classroom essentials.
Spending a little extra time on browsing the market to make a more considered purchase can often make all the difference to your budget.
4. Free Downloads
Free downloadable resources can be a great way to save on costly resources. The variety of free resources available online mean that learning in many different areas can be done with just paper and a pencil. This could be through the use of downloadable posters and worksheets, storytelling sheets, fine motor practice, scavenger hunt sheets or curricular learning sheets!
5. Predictive Forecasting
This may sound like a complicated process but predictive forecasting is relatively simple and can save your school hundreds in funding so it is well worth spending the time on! The first step is to establish where you plan to be in X amount of time. This could be planning to move more towards digital and relying less on paper. Or deciding to support children’s mental health via physical development and physical education. Once this forecasting has been established – it is easier to plan your spending to support your future.
On top of this forward planning, you should consider the “what ifs”. This will help to ensure that you have contingency plans in place. Additionally, this will ensure your budget is efficiently spent and save yourself time and money in the process.
Useful Information
Finally, it is important to know what additional support and funding you may be eligible for. Browsing the government website is a great place to start as this covers all the different types of government-allocated funding that is available. There is also a short questionnaire that your school can complete to establish what you may be eligible for.
There are also an abundance of helpful sites online that provide details of additional grants that can be applied for. We have added a few links below!