Mr Patsy McGlone (Mid Ulster): To ask the Minister of Education to detail any assessment his Department has made of whether current school funding arrangements adequately recognise the strategic importance of small rural schools where pupil numbers are low.
Minister of Education: I refer the Member to my response to AQW 52394/22-27.
All grant aided schools are funded under the Common Funding Scheme (CFS). The Common Funding Formula (CFF) is the Department’s mechanism for allocating budgets to schools funded through Local Management of Schools arrangements. A school’s CFF allocation is determined by both the quantum of funding available to the Aggregated Schools Budget and a combination of the school’s overall enrolment, the differentiated needs of its pupils and the school’s characteristics.
The CFS includes a number of factors which provide additional support for smaller schools. The Small School Support factor provides additional funding to facilitate the delivery of the curriculum, while the Primary Principals’ Release Time Factor provides funding to enable teaching principals to be released from classroom duties to undertake leadership, management and administrative responsibilities. Funding under both factors is determined by pupil enrolment.
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