Today’s Education in the media blog looks at the funding we are putting into ICT in schools, as well as wider investment into education.
School Funding
Today, Tuesday 25 September, TES published an article about school funding, based on results from a survey by the British Educational Suppliers’ Association. Alongside this, the Guardian ran an opinion piece on school funding.
A child taking their GCSEs this year will have seen investment of over £65,000 across their education since the age of three. This is double the funding that their parents’ generation would have received.
The Education Secretary is committed to helping schools reduce their non-staffing expenditure which is why earlier this month we announced the launch of a new free website for schools to advertise vacancies, which they currently spend up to £75million a year on. Alongside this we are setting up a new register of teacher supply agencies that will help schools avoid being charged excessive fees.
A Department for Education spokesperson said:
There is more money going into schools than ever before, and school funding will rise to a record £43.5 billion by 2020 – 50% more in real terms per pupil than in 2000. We know that we are asking schools to do more though, which is why we recently launched the School Resource Management Strategy, which looks to help free up money for schools to enable them to direct resources to where they are needed most - including new deals on computers and software licenses.
We are committed to strengthening the teaching of computing in schools, and are doing so through £84m of investment over the next four years, which will provide training and resources to teachers of computing in primary and secondary schools. On top of this, our framework for teacher training providers makes clear that they should ensure trainee teachers are familiar with using digital resources, such as computers.
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