Education: Cambridgeshire
Education and Skills
Written answers and statements, 9 May 2007
Malcolm Moss (North East Cambridgeshire, Conservative)
To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills for what reason the Cambridgeshire Standards Fund Ethnic Minority Achievement Grant was reduced by 30 per cent. in 2004.
Jim Knight (Minister of State (Schools and 14-19 Learners), Department for Education and Skills; South Dorset, Labour)
Changes to the distribution of the Ethnic Minority Achievement (EMAG) element of the Standards Fund were introduced in 2004-05 to bring a better targeted, fairer and more sensible distribution to this grant. These changes were widely endorsed by the DfES "Aiming High: Raising the Achievement of Minority Ethnic Pupils" consultation of 2003.
The redistribution of funding resulted in a small number of local authorities, including Cambridgeshire, receiving less funding than they did under the previous system under which allocations did not properly reflect the number of minority ethnic children in the local authority. However, losses in any one year were limited to 0.05 per cent. of each authority's overall school funding.