NI schools to get less money per pupil

All schools in Northern Ireland are to receive less money per pupil in 2018-19, the BBC has learnt.

They will receive more than £6 less per pupil compared to the previous year.

That comes after more substantial cuts to funding per pupil, especially in primary and nursery schools, in 2017-18.

The Department of Education (DE) had already warned that there was no money to pay for additional pressures schools may face this year.

About three quarters of the funding a school gets from DE is calculated based on its number of pupils.

In 2017-18, the cash value of the vast majority of primary and nursery school pupils under the common funding formula was £2,004.71.

That was a reduction of £56 from their cash value the previous year.

However, in 2018-19 that has been reduced again to £1,998 per pupil, a fall of more than £6.

The amount of money post-primary schools receive per pupil has also been reduced by about the same amount.

The value of each post-primary pupil is £2,055.69 in 2018-19 compared to £2,062.19 in the current year and £2,077.24 in 2016/17.

Schools with a large number of pupils could lose thousands of pounds in funding due to the reduction.

The department said that the reduction was "primarily as a result of an increase in overall pupil numbers".

"The impact will vary at individual school level depending on any movement in pupil numbers at that level," said a spokesman.

The cash value of most school pupils is also multiplied so the actual decrease in real-terms funding will be larger than £6 per pupil.

Post-primary schools receive about £1,300 more per pupil than primary schools when age weighting is taken into account.

The sum is higher for sixth form pupils.