David Laws confirms cut to council school support grant

The £200m cut in the amount given to councils through the education services grant (ESG) in 2015/16 was confirmed by schools minister David Laws in a written statement to parliament published on Wednesday. He said it was needed to help protect frontline schools budgets and pupil premium funding.

The ESG is used by local authorities to fund their work to hold schools to account for their performance and to help those that are struggling to improve. It is currently worth £116 per pupil annually.

A consultation over the implementation of the cuts – which were first announced by the Chancellor last year – had seen the Local Government Association (LGA) and council chief executives group Solace warn that council oversight of schools would be damaged by the move.

But making the announcement Laws said: “The ESG funding rate will now be £87 per pupil. We know that these rates are sufficient to deliver the services covered by ESG because in 2013/14, 52 local authorities were planning to spend below this level to deliver those services.”

Laws added that a £15 per pupil top-up given to councils to fund their improvement duties for all pupils, including those in academies, would be maintained after evidence from the consultation “strongly suggested that we should not reduce this retained duty rate in 2015/16”.

The LGA described the government’s decision to push ahead with the cut as “disappointing” and one that would further widen the gap between grant-maintained schools and academies.

David Simmonds, chair of the LGA’s children and young people board, said: “Councils have already warned about the consequences of these disappointing cuts, which will put further pressure on councils’ ability to support school improvement and hold schools to account.

“As more schools take advantage of the average £700 per pupil additional funding that academy status brings and given the announcement that academy funding will be protected, we need to make sure that no child and no school is left behind.”

Laws announced that in 2015/16 academies would no longer receive the ESG top-up, but that they would not lose more than 1.5 per cent of their budget as a result of the change. Updated guidance on how local authorities should spend the ESG has also been published.