Eagle-eyed readers may have spotted the couple of comments left by ‘Billy Builder’ here OnTheWight a while ago, claiming there would be a loss of funding for Isle of Wight schools in future years.
Billy claimed that an application for schools capital funding for 2014/15 – which was usually submitted by the two suspended education officers – had not been submitted by the council in their absence. The result, Billy claimed, was a loss to Island schools of between £3m to £15m in Government funding.
Given the severity of the claim and its potential impact on school places, OnTheWight has spent considerable time investigating this.
IWC: “Would not be a good use of resources to apply”
We asked the Isle of Wight council whether there was any truth in the claims made by Billy, or truth in further information we’d received.
Rather refreshingly, we received a fairly swift reply from the head of the IWC press office (after this perhaps?). In summary, the council say they didn’t apply for funding because, they claimed, there is no need for it.
We can confirm that the thrust of your question appears to be flawed in that staffing issues had no bearing on this issue.
The fact is that this grant is to help local education authorities respond to pressure on school places. There is no such pressure on the Island where the issue, conversely, is one of surplus places. The issue of future need was also covered in the grants that have enabled the schools re-organisation to take place.
Given this situation and that there is no expectation demand for school places will increase in the near future, we would have been ineligible for this grant.
Therefore it would not be a good use of resources to apply.
Stats request pushed to FOI
To clarify the council’s claims that there’s a surplus of places on the Island and therefore – in their eyes – no requirement for ‘Basic Need funding’ for any individual areas or schools, OnTheWight have requested the capacity and forecast statistics for all schools.
Lamentably, despite their answer above relying on this information, the council wouldn’t give us this data, forcing us to apply for it under a FIOA request.
Three and a half weeks later, we’ve still not yet received a response.
DfE: “No pressure on places”
We also wrote to the Department for Education for a comment on the zero allocation for funding.
A DfE spokesperson said,
“The current capacity of the schools in the Isle of Wight is greater than the number of pupils they are predicting to have in 2015/16. Therefore, they have no pressure on places and as a result were not allocated Basic Need funding.”
Surplus may not be evenly distributed
So far that all sounds perfectly logical, except that – as you might expect – surplus places are rarely distributed evenly across a council or area.
For example, there may be surplus places in rural areas on the Island, but in other, more built-up areas, where school places are very tight, there may be a valid case for future Basic Need funding.
Until we have the full stats from the council, we can’t analyse whether certain areas are pushed for places or not.
Do you know different?
Of course, if you work at any of the Island schools, we’d be more than happy for you to come on and comment on here (or via email) and let us know what you think about over-crowding at your schools and about not getting the extra Government funding.
