Three Christian schools in Bristol have voted against supporting children with additional education needs in a row over funding. An extra £5 million will be distributed by Bristol City Council to schools taking into account the number of children with additional needs there.
Schools were given a choice on how best to distribute the millions of pounds for the next school year, beginning this September. The first option would have spread out any remaining cash to schools based simply on the number of pupils they have.
The second option will spread out this cash instead by maximising the amount of money for disadvantaged children with additional needs. The schools forum, a committee made up of schools across Bristol, met on Wednesday, January 15, to decide which option to go with.
Vik Verma, council director of education and skills, said: “If one of our principles is to make sure that the funding is supporting the children that need it the most, then option two is probably the most beneficial in that respect — just to link this back to attainment, because sometimes we’re looking at just money, and we’re not looking at how this links to outcomes.”
Three members voted for option one, while 11 voted for option two. The three voting against represented St Bernadette Catholic Secondary School in Whitchurch, St Bede’s Catholic College in Lawrence Weston, and St John’s Church of England Primary School in Redland.
Merche Clark, a governor at St John’s, said: “Between option one and two, overall there isn’t a huge amount of difference. The Bristol formula really does put a lot of emphasis on these deprivation indices, and things like that, so that’s already quite heavily catered for.
“The national funding formula reinforces that as well. So while more schools are benefited with option two, some of the schools receiving very close to the £4,955 per student are not getting very much at all. While looking at just schools, option two benefits more, but some of those schools that would benefit more from option one already receive very low amounts per student.”