Inside Salisbury: Plea for education funding support
Wiltshire Council ranked in the lowest group for funding
By Annette J Beveridge
THERE is a major gap in funding for pupils across Wiltshire compared to other parts of the country, and school leaders and Wiltshire Council are calling on local MPs to help.
The F40 Group is a coalition of the UK’s 43 lowest-funded authorities, including Wiltshire Council, which continues to receive significantly less per pupil than many other areas. Despite rising costs and increasing demand, the county ranks 18th lowest out of 151 for mainstream school funding and 20th lowest for high needs SEND funding for 2025–2026.
While Wiltshire is undertaking a substantial programme of transformation, the level of high-needs funding remains a major challenge. Wiltshire’s 2024/25 DSG year-end deficit was £61.190m, and this is forecast to be £96.050m at the end of the 2025/26 financial year.
Cabinet Member for Children’s Services, Education and Skills, Councillor Jon Hubbard, is writing to MPs to urge them to attend the F40 Parliamentary event on Tuesday, July 1, 2025 and represent the voices of Wiltshire’s school leaders in Westminster.
He said: “This is about fairness, opportunity, and the future of our children. Wiltshire’s teachers and pupils are being short-changed. The gap between our funding and that of the highest-funded areas is staggering. Our educators do incredible work, but they need fair funding to give every child the opportunities they deserve. I’m urging our MPs to stand with us and call for change.”
Wiltshire is part of the Department for Education’s (DfE) Safety Valve programme, which supports local authorities facing significant or rapidly growing deficits in the High Needs Block of the Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG).
Cllr Hubbard added: “I was shocked to learn that if we’d received the same funding as the top-funded local authority, we wouldn’t have Safety Valve to manage as our forecast deficit would be completely removed. The disparity between the highest and lowest funded authorities in the country is far too wide and means that the children and young people in Wiltshire are at a significant disadvantage compared to their peers.”
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Chair of the Children’s Select Committee, Cllr Laura Mayes, said: “This renewed push for fairer funding is so important. We’re uniting local voices to ensure this issue is raised in Parliament. Every child, regardless of postcode, deserves equal access to quality education.”