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27 Feb 2006 : Column 575W—continued
School Commissioning
Mrs. Ellman: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills if she will name the new schools which have been commissioned through the competitive process, broken down by local education authority; and what criteria were used in making the decision whether to use that process. [53906]
Jacqui Smith: There have been no competitions held by local authorities to find alternative providers for new schools. Provisions in the Education Act 2002 and regulations made under that Act prescribe that a local authority may not make its own proposals for additional secondary schools unless it also invites proposals from other interested parties, but under this legislation proposals outside this process are possible from other proposers, and it is open to an authority to support these proposals rather than publish its own.
We are currently consulting on regulations under the 2005 Act that extend the competitive process to all new secondary schools, including replacement schools, and prevent the publication of proposals outside this process, by either local authorities or other proposers, unless the Secretary of State gives her consent.
The recent Education White Paper envisages extending these arrangements to all maintained schools, including primary schools.
School Dinners
Anne Snelgrove: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills what plans she has to encourage local authorities to provide hot school dinners. [52735]
Jacqui Smith: We are investing £220 million over three years to help schools and local authorities transform school meals through training and increased hours for cooks, equipment and a minimum spend on ingredients.
A targeted school meals grant of £30 million for this year has already been allocated to local authorities with a further £100 million over the following two years. Similarly, £30 million has been granted direct to schools as part of their standards fund allocations for the purposes of improving school food, with a further £60 million over the following two years.
A condition attached to the targeted school meals grant is that the authority's strategy must include plans to begin the reintroduction of universal hot meals provision, where it does not already exist, by September 2008.
Mark Simmonds: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills (1) in what percentage of (a) primary and (b) secondary schools hot lunches are cooked (i) on and (ii) off the school premises in (A) Lincolnshire and (B) Boston and Skegness; [53857]
(2) what the average cost of a school meal was for (a) primary and (b) secondary school pupils in (A) Lincolnshire and (B) Boston and Skegness constituency in the last period for which figures are available. [53858]
Jacqui Smith:
The Department for Education and Skills does not collect this information centrally.
27 Feb 2006 : Column 576W
School Finance
Miss McIntosh: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills what weight has been given to the (a) sparsity and (b) deprivation factors in the school funding settlement in (i) 2006–07 and (ii) 2007–08. [51572]
Jacqui Smith: Weights for deprivation and sparsity are not separately identified with the distribution method for Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG) for 2006–07 and 2007–08. That method starts from each authority's budgeted spend for schools in 2005–06, which largely reflects the historical allocation of resources through the Schools Formula Spending Share (FSS) formula, which had separate weightings for deprivation, sparsity, and area costs. Given the importance the Government attaches to deprivation funding, the summary of indicative allocations of DSG (which can be found on the Teachernet website at www.teachernet.gov.uk/DSG200608/), includes an estimate of funding for deprivation contained within each authority's allocation of DSG. The national average is 10.5 per cent. for 2007–08 and 10.6 per cent. for 2007–08. The overall proportion of funding distributed on the basis of sparsity within Schools FSS—the predecessor to DSG—was 0.7 per cent. That proportion was based on research into the additional costs to sparsely populated authorities of keeping open small primary schools, and larger numbers of under fives settings, carried out during the formula review which led to the introduction of the Schools FSS formula. Almost half of all local authorities received no funding for sparsity through the schools FSS formula and the maximum proportion of funding for sparsity across all authorities was 3.6 per cent. The formula for the LEA FSS recognised the increased costs of home to school transport in sparse authorities.
Mr. Paice: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills what the average financial position of (a) primary schools and (b) secondary schools was in each local education authority at the latest available date. [52246]
Jacqui Smith [holding answer 16 February 2006]: The available information is contained within the following table.
n/a—figures not available.
(141) The average (mean) revenue balance for a local authority is calculated as the combination of the total revenue balance of all the schools included by the local authority on their Section 52 Outturn Statement (Table B) divided by the number of schools reported on the statement.
(142) A school's total revenue balance is calculated from the combination of any unspent allocations (including unspent Standards Fund grants) and the cumulative balance of income less expenditure from revenue funding sources during the financial year and any balances carried forward from previous years. This is drawn by adding together the committed revenue balance and uncommitted revenue balance columns from local authorities 2004–05 Section 52 Outturn Statements (Table B).
(143) Financial data used to determine revenue budgets is rounded to the nearest pound.
(144) Schools have been allocated to primary and secondary phases of education according to what phase they have been reported under in their Section 52 Outturn Statement.
Note:
Data reported using cash terms figures as reported by local authorities as at 14 February 2006.
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