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| f40 Annual Conference 2011 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Bookings are now being taken for places at our annual conference, which is to be held at Local Government House, Smith Square, Westminster, London on Monday, 17 October 2011. The event starts at 11am and concludes with lunch at approximately 1.30pm. There is no charge to attend or for lunch. The key speaker will be Sarah Healey, Director of the Education Funding Group at the Department for Education, who will explain how the government hopes to achieve a fairer and more transparent funding system…and how she anticipates the three month consultation, due to conclude on 11 October, will influence the final decisions. We will also hear from:
The conference will be chaired by Cllr Ivan Ould, Chair of f40 and Lead Member for Children & Young People at Leicestershire County Council. Download a booking form
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| f40 gets to work on response to School Funding Reform consultation | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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f40 has started work on its response to the 2nd Stage consultation on School Funding Reform. It is hoped that the consultation, which was launched in July and is due to conclude on 11 October 2011, will lead to the introduction of a new, fairer funding formula. f40 has appointed a sub-group of its Executive Committee members to prepare a draft response, which in due course will be shared with all member authorities. This new stage follows on from the earlier consultation that set out to deal with the rationale and principles for the intended reform. On the face of it, the government appears to be proposing a new, fairer and more transparent school funding system, pretty much in line with what f40 has campaigned for over many years. The background information supporting the consultation states that the new system will introduce a national formula to allocate money more consistently across the country, whilst allowing a degree of local flexibility to meet specific needs where agreed by schools. f40 Chair, Cllr Ivan Ould, who is also Lead Member for Childrens & Young People in Leicestershire, said that it looks as though the government is now acting on f40’s well-documented complaints about the inequity and unfairness of the present flawed funding allocation system. He said: “Over many years the authorities at the bottom of the education funding league table have campaigned to change the very unfair formula that created a ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’ situation where there was an extremely large gap between the best and poorest funded authorities. 'The current 'spend-plus' funding system is opaque, full of anomalies and is unfair. Our aim has been to encourage the government to create a new funding system which is fair, transparent and able to support a diverse range of school provision...and these proposals look promising in that respect. 'However, there is some disappointment that the timeframe for change may be slow and f40 authorities may not see the benefits of the change for quite a few years'. Naturally, f40 is hoping that all member authorities will be making their own response to this critically important consultation. There's more detail about the consultation on: |
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| Membership update | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Despite our name, there are currently only 30 authorities in membership of f40. Six long-serving members have seen their funding levels increase slightly, putting them marginally higher in the league table, but they have stayed loyal to f40 and continued their membership. So in reality, only 24 of the 40 worst-funded authorities
subscribe to the campaign, and 16 more authorities really belong in
the Group. Here's a list of those in membership this year (2011-12): |
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Bedford Borough |
Nottinghamshire Oxfordshire Shropshire Solihull South Gloucestershire Staffordshire Stockport Suffolk Trafford Wakefield Warrington Warwickshire Wigan Worcestershire York |
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The Group would undoubtedly have more clout if every authority in the bottom 40 part of the league were to join f40, especially at this critically important time. Here's a list of those authorities extracted from DfE GUF Totals 2011-2012 who should consider joining our ranks:
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| To contact f40 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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To get in touch with f40 please contact Doug Allan, Secretary on 07785 223707 or email doug@dtw.co.uk There's more information about f40 and its activities on our website at www.f40.org.uk |
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The National Funding Formula: creating a fairer system for all children