Central Bedfordshire's School funding Deficit has raised from 10.8million to 24.4million in the first year of The Independent Administration.
This afternoon, Central Bedfordshire's Audit committee had the first report about the 2023/24 Statement of accounts which informed the public that the councils Dedicated Schools Grant deficit will rise from £10.4m to £24.4m by the end of the year.
The funding for our schools comes from Central government to Central Beds Council who then give out the funding to the schools and services that should receive it. In 2022, in response to a massive increase in need for education funding across the country, the Conservative Government responded with an appropriate increase of funding to schools…
Only joking. They decided to underfund education and if the funding they send to Local authorities isn’t enough then the councils can just go into deficit, and we can all pretend that everything’s O.K.
This is true. It’s called Statutory Override, and it means that Central government doesn’t pay for the massive debt accrued by schools due to underfunding. It was only supposed to be for three years so at the end of the three years the government decided once again not to properly fund education, but instead, to extend the statutory override to 2026.
The F40, a group of Local authorities (which includes Central Bedfordshire as we have the fifth lowest per pupil funding in the country), who campaign for a fairness within schools funding, state the latest estimates conclude that "the cumulative local authority High Needs budget deficit across England will be around £3.6bn by March 2025." they are calling for an extra £4.6billion of extra funding.
F40 calls for funding:
View the CBC audit commitee meeting here:
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