Mr. Adam Harris:

Everyone here has more experience of dealing with Departments and agencies more than I do, but I think it would be pretty standard practice that if you are going to run an appeals process, you budget for it and hold a certain amount back knowing that no algorithm - as is the case with this one - is perfect. That has not been the case, so we have been told it will be all about keeping within the overall budget and that there is no absolute figure. This does not indicate that there is going to be a robustness to what is proposed. There is also the reality that when it is very easy for the Department to continuously say that schools have the resources they need, it is also very easy to pass the blame back to schools when they are telling us that they do not have those resources. There is also the fact that 84% of schools that appealed last year were unsuccessful.