Nursery World - Consultation on school funding includes early years

Plans to change the way early education is funded are included in the Government's consultation on school funding reform.

Education secretary Michael Gove said the current system for schools was 'extremely complex, opaque and often unfair'.

Proposals include splitting the Dedicated Schools Grant into three funding blocks - for schools, SEN and alternative provision, and early years - allocated to local authorities. The early years block will cover the free entitlement for three-and four-year-olds and centrally retained services for early years.

A further funding block will be allocated to services currently within the schools budget that are not suitable for delegation.

'We will continue to ringfence the whole of the grant so that it is spent on the functions for which it is meant. However, the individual blocks will not be ringfenced. This will enable local authorities, in consultation with their Schools Forums, to move funding between the blocks, mirroring the current situation,' the consultation says.

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