Redistribution and financing schools in England under Labour: are resources going where needs are greatest?

This article explores the policy changes made by the Labour government to the recurrent funding of school-based education in England, focusing in particular on the allocation of resources to meet the needs of disadvantaged pupils. Expenditure on education and, in particular, on schools has increased since 1997. However, while there have been two major changes to the way in which government allocates resources to local authorities (LAs) and a new requirement for LAs to include a deprivation factor in their funding formulae for schools, the evidence indicates that resources are being allocated to schools in a less redistributive manner than they are being allocated by central government to LAs. To address this issue, the government could require a minimum proportion of funding to be allocated to schools on the basis of disadvantage; however, politically this would be problematic in the absence of additional resources as it would mean cuts being made by LAs elsewhere in the education budget. And whilst there is now some information about the level of funding allocated to meet the needs of disadvantaged pupils, there is a paucity of information about how these resources are actually used within schools.