Isle of Wight County Teachers’ Association
Tel: 07734013783
secretary@isle-of-wight-county.nut.org.uk

4th July 2016

Mr Andrew Turner MP
The Riverside Centre,
The Quay,
Newport,
PO30 2QR
Dear Andrew
Funding for Isle of Wight Schools
In March the Government started a consultation on a National Funding Formula (NFF) for schools.
Despite the Government’s aim to have ‘fairer funding’, the Isle of Wight will not in fact benefit from the
Government’s proposed NFF for schools, since the Government’s overall funding freeze will sweep
away all of the funding gains promised by the NFF. The Isle of Wight is likely to see a further cut in
funding of about 4.8%1.
A recent survey of NUT members on the Isle of Wight found that 57% of teachers are already often
using their own money to buy resources for children due to lack of school funds.
Lack of funding has forced some Schools on the Island to stop all photocopying, while at least one
has run out of exercise books and can cannot afford to purchase any more. Ten schools have already
been forced to declare redundancies this year. Class sizes will be increasing from September and
many GCSE and post-16 courses, particularly in the Arts, are no longer being taught on the Island.
The NUT calls on you to:





request an urgent meeting with Nicky Morgan, the Secretary of State for Education, to seek
assurances that funding to Island schools will be will not be further reduced and will raise to cover
increasing school costs;
insist that she reverses the damaging cuts to post-16 funding;
make a pledge that you will campaign against any school closures, as a result of funding shortfalls,
on the Isle of Wight.

Yours sincerely

Dominic Coughlin
Secretary
Isle of Wight County Teachers’ Association
1

The NUT has taken estimates published by the f40 group of local authorities on the impact of a revised funding
formula on funding allocations for schools in each local authority area and adjusted those revised allocations for the
impact of forecast inflation over the period to the end of this Parliament using forecasts for average CPI inflation over
that period as published in HM Treasury's Forecasts for the UK Economy.

www.teachers.org.uk/isleofwight

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