Out-of-hours and holiday child care provided by schools as community services have an important role to play in increasing the amount of affordable and flexible care. We need more schools to be offering this sort of community facility.

The Government is removing unnecessary red tape, increasing freedoms, and helping schools to understand how to provide community facilities.

For example, we are aligning staffing and qualification requirements with the school day; removing the need for schools to consult when introducing community facilities, or have regard to guidance from the Secretary of State or local authorities; clarifying the rules on charging for community facilities; and helping schools to learn from those who have done it successfully.

We have committed to introducing a new national funding formula during the next spending review period. As a first step towards that, we have made a number of important changes to the school funding system for 2013-14.

We have rationalised and simplified the formula factors that local authorities can use to allocate funding to their schools so that there is greater consistency and transparency. The calculation of budgets for academies will also be clearer and will follow the same timetable as maintained schools.

We have also transformed funding arrangements for pupils with high needs, so that it can support the improvements in choice and quality which we have set out in our Children and Families Bill.

We are in the process of reviewing the effects of the new funding arrangements for 2013-14 and on the basis of this review we will consider whether to make changes for 2014-15 in order to move us closer to a national funding formula.

The Government has acknowledged that the current system for funding schools is unfair and out of date. We have committed to introducing a national funding formula in the next spending review period. The national funding formula will reassess need across the different local authorities in England and we will allocate funding accordingly, with the majority of funding being based on pupil numbers.

We have not yet made an assessment of the Minimum Funding Guarantee beyond 2014-15 because this falls in the next spending review period. We expect the education budget for 2015/16 to be set later this year in the Spending Review

We have received several representations from local authorities, hon. members representing relatively lower funded local authorities and the campaign group F40 about addressing the funding gap.

We have received representations from a few local authorities (including hon. Members representing, and head teachers working, in schools in those authorities) about the effects of the new funding arrangements for 2013-14 on small schools. These are mainly large rural authorities with several small schools. We recognise the

vital role of small schools in rural communities and the new funding arrangements are not designed to disadvantage small schools in any way.

We are currently conducting a review of the new funding arrangements for 2013-14. Officials from the Department of Education have visited Bradford, Cumbria, East Sussex, Norfolk, North Yorkshire, Somerset, Staffordshire and Worcestershire to discuss how the new funding arrangements has impacted their schools.

On 12 February, we published a document, ‘Review of 2013-14 School Funding Arrangements’, which summarises how the 2013-14 reforms have been implemented. We are seeking views from governors, head teachers and local authorities on a number of specific issues, including on small schools in sparsely populated areas, that have been raised. A copy of this document is available at:

http://tinyurl.com/schoolsrevenuefunding

On the basis of this review, which also includes analysis of all local authority funding formulae, we will consider whether we need to make small changes in 2014-15 in order to address some of the issues raised.

In 2012-13 (the last year for which figures are available), Swindon was allocated a guaranteed per pupil unit of funding of £4,696.48 and Reading was allocated a guaranteed per pupil unit of funding £5,287.21. The average guaranteed per pupil unit of funding in England for 2012-13 is £5,082.84.

The Department for Education has not received any representations from Swindon.