School Finance
Most parents who actively engaged in the education of their child will have very little knowledge of how schools are funded. Some may have heard of the National Funding Formula (NFF), but what exactly is it? How will it affect your child’s education?
The NFF is the government strategy used to decide how much money should be given to English state schools each financial year. Under the National Funding Formula there are a number of different factors that are taken into account when setting schools budgets, the biggest being per-pupil funding. It remains the case that funding levels between individual schools – with similar intakes and similar circumstances – can vary significantly simply because of where they are located in the country.
As a small rural Voluntary Aided (VA) Church of England primary school, our school budget, which comes from West Sussex County Council, is relatively small when compared to many schools in neighbouring Lindfield and Haywards Heath. There are no employees in the school earning over £100k.
The School Information (England) Regulations 2020, which took effect on 1st January 2021, require that all maintained schools publish this information on their website along with a link to the Government webpage which is dedicated to the school on the schools financial benchmarking service. To see this information for St Giles CE Primary School, please follow the link below:
Schools Financial Benchmarking Service
Over the years we have been incredibly fortunate that additional funds have been raised by our Parent Teacher Association (PTA), The Friends of St Giles School. This voluntary committee work tirelessly with the sole aim of raising additional funds in order to: make purchases that the school could not otherwise afford; pay for enriching experiences for the pupils; and to unite families, friends and staff of St Giles through organised social events with a shared sense of purpose.
For more information about our PTA, please visit their dedicated page of our website.