Financial help to be given to Westbury schools

WILTSHIRE Council has received £405,503 in funding to help its schools with a financial deficit. 

In the Westbury area, the following schools will receive funds; Bratton Primary School (£11,953), Westbury Junior School (£952), Chapmanslade Primary School (£848) and Westbury Leigh Primary School (£690). 

In October 2023, a report of school balances showed that 12 of Wiltshire-maintained schools had a deficit in 2022-23. This is a slight increase from the previous two years, but still below 2019-20 when 17 schools had a deficit. 

The Department for Education recently announced one-off funding to support schools in financial difficulty in the 2023-24 financial year.  

£20million has been awarded to local authorities who have the most significant maintained school deficits – Wiltshire Council was one of the 35 local authorities eligible and received £405,503. 

At Wiltshire Council’s Schools Forum meeting on Tuesday 5th December, members discussed how this amount would be allocated. They decided to approve the School Funding Working Group’s suggestion of applying a formulaic approach to allocation. 

This means that the funding awarded is directly proportional with the scale of the individual deficits. This formula was considered the most equitable option considering the one-off nature of the funding. 

The Department for Education have instructed local authorities to use this funding to best support their schools in the “individual circumstances in which they find themselves.”