The introduction of the new Schools Funding Formula will be pushed back by a year, the new education secretary Justine Greening has revealed today.
The plans were due to be implemented in 2017-18, but will now start in 2018-19 to allow for further consultation, the Department for Education said.
The existing formula has been attacked for leaving the best-funded schools able to hire 40 more teachers than the worst off, with a cash variable of as much as £3,000 per pupil.
New plans include a per-pupil funding allocation as well as extra cash for additional needs such as deprivation, low academic attainment and English as an additional language.
In a ministerial statement, new education secretary Justine Greening said today: “Given the importance of consulting widely and fully with the sector and getting implementation right, the new system will apply from 2018-19.”
She added that responses to the first stage of consultation suggested the reforms were a “once in a generation opportunity for an historic change and that we must get our approach right”.
Greening also sought to assure local authorities that their per-pupil funding and cash grant would not be cut in 2017-18 from the level of the previous year.
And she said the minimum funding guarantee would be maintained for 2017-18, meaning each school will not face a funding reduction of more than 1.5% per pupil next year through local authority funds.
Earlier this year former education secretary Nicky Morgan said the new national formula was the “biggest step towards fairer funding in over a decade”.
“It will also ensure that pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds continue to receive significant additional funding to overcome entrenched barriers to their success,” she added.
“This is a key part of our core mission to extend opportunity to all children and provide educational excellence in all parts of the country: rural and urban, shire and metropolitan, north and south.”