Alongside parliamentary colleagues from West Sussex I lobbied successfully for a new National Funding Formula (NFF) to ensure fairer funding for schools in our county.

In July 2022, I welcomed Department for Education confirmation that funding for schools in Crawley is set to increase in 2023-24 by 4.5 per cent to almost £100 million.

Nationally, the Government is increasing core schools funding by £1.5 billion in 2023-24, building on the £4 billion increase already provided this year.

All of our young people should be able to receive a top-quality education, wherever they grow up in our country, and an important part of this is ensuring that our schools are given such financial support.

This record funding for Crawley schools will give them vital resources to raise attainment, provide the right support to all pupils and students, increase teacher pay, and continue to address the challenges of pandemic response and recovery.

The Department for Education has confirmed that it continues to provide year-on-year increases to school funding. The total core school budget for England will rise to £56.8 billion by 2024-25; a £7 billion cash increase compared with 2021-22.

Funding for mainstream schools through the NFF is increasing by 1.9 per cent per pupil compared to 2022-23. Together with the funding increases seen in 2022-23, funding through the NFF will be 7.9 per cent higher per pupil in 2023-24, compared to 2021-22.

The Government have confirmed that high needs funding – support for children with the most severe special educational needs and disabilities – is increasing by a further £570 million (6.3 per cent) in 2023-24 – on top of the £2.6 billion increase over the last three years. This brings the total high needs budget to over £9.7 billion. All local authorities will receive at least a 5 per cent increase per head of their 2-18 population, compared to their 2022-23 allocations, with some authorities seeing gains of up to 7 per cent.