The Welsh Assembly decides on the allocation of money to the various areas for which it is responsible. Welsh local authorities are given a block grant, called the Rate Support Grant (RSG), to pay for all local services, including education. 

The RSG is calculated using the Standard Spending Assessments (SSA), which are notional calculations of what each council needs to spend to provide a standard level of service.

The SSA calculation is broken down between the different services provided by local authorities, including education.

The other main sources of funding for local authority education budgets are council tax income and non-domestic rates income.

Funding for post-16 provision in schools is by specific grant from the Welsh Government to local authorities, for distribution to schools with sixth-forms. Other grants include the School Effectiveness Grant and Pupil Deprivation Grant.

The Individual Schools Budget (ISB) is the amount delegated to schools.

Money is distributed to schools by means of a formula called the ‘Fair Funding Scheme for Financing Schools’.

By far the most important determinant in the formula is the number and age of pupils on roll.

The second element in the formula relates to the running costs of the school premises, including cleaning and maintenance.

The Welsh Government had committed to narrowing the funding gap between Wales and England by increasing the funding for schools by 1% above the Wales block grant.

However, the cuts to the block grant have resulted in slow progress in narrowing the funding gap.

The per pupil funding gap between schools in Wales and England in 2010 stood at £604.

The Welsh Government stopped publishing this data, because comparison with England had become too difficult due the emerging academies and free schools programme.

However, the NASUWT has interrogated the 2014 school funding data that is available in both England and Wales and has established that, on average, the per pupil funding gap had increased to £843.

This represents an under-investment in schools to the tune of £380 million.

If just half of this money had been put into schools, some 4,400 additional teachers, or a combination of teachers and support staff, could have been employed. Instead, 776 teaching posts have been cut across schools in Wales since 2010.

The NASUWT is continuing to press for a better funding settlement for education in Wales for the benefit of teachers, schools and pupils.