CHANGES to the school funding formula have been approved by Monmouthshire County Council (MCC) on Wednesday 4th February.

The formula is reviewed annually to ensure that funds are distributed using the fairest method and a working group was set-up, representing the schools, to made recommendations on three methods of distributing the funding.

This working group proposed that the best of the three options suggested was by pooling funding and distributing it via the age weighted pupil unit which works on pupil numbers.

This would be the case for all schools apart from Mounton House which is a specialist social, emotional and behavioural difficulties school. The reason for this is because Mounton House has a higher ratio of non-teaching staff due to the nature of its specialism and the working group was concerned that pooling the funding completely would see a large reduction in its budget.

All schools were consulted about the plans and all but one of the thirteen responses agreed with the preferred proposal.

The decision does not change the amount of funding for schools but how to correctly distribute those resources.