Agenda item

The Forum received a report that summarised the decisions of the DFE on data changes to be used by Local Authorities in the calculation of school budgets for 2017-18 and the proposed options on the values to be applied to the formula factors.  The report informed that the deadline for final budget submission to the DFE was 20 January 2017.

The Forum noted that the final Dedicated Schools Grant(DSG) allocations for 2017-18 have been received from the DFE.  The allocation included the Schools’ Block from which the LA allocated school budgets.  The Schools’ Block allocation to Havering was £169.915 million.

The amount included a figure of £589k of the transferred Education Services Grant (ESG) which had previously been allocated to the Local Authority towards the cost of statutory duties. 

The report confirmed that Forum at its meeting on 22 September 2016, had agreed to the central retention of budget for the following responsibilities permitted by the school finance regulations:

The Forum noted that the school data to which the funding formula was applied were taken from the October 2016 census. The report appended the permitted factors and data sources as appendix A.

The report outlined the following changes to the data sets used in previous years:

·         Income Deprivation Affecting Children Index (IDACI)

The following table below detailed the differences between 2015-16 to 2017-18 in relation to Havering:

·         Prior Attainment

The report added that because of the more challenging tests at KS2, a national weighting of 49% had been applied to reduce the data used for funding purposes.  The data for pupils in Years 8-11 was based on the previous KS2 SATs.

The Funding Forum was presented with a number of options on the funding rates to be applied to the formula factors for 2017-18.  These were as follows:

Option A

The same rates as in 2016-17 but with a reduction in Band C IDACI and a 1% gains cap

Option B

The NFF rates and a 3% gains cap

Option C

The NFF rates but retaining the LAC factor and a 1% gains cap

Option D

Moving half way towards the NFF rates and a 1% gains cap

For each option it was made clear from handouts which schools gained and which lost but were protected by the minimum funding guarantee.

The Schools Funding Forum agreed to implement Option A as the rates to be applied to the schools formula funding factors for 2017-18.

This meant that there was £302k unallocated which the Forum agreed could remain as a contingency for further consideration of a contribution to central costs following the removal of the Education Services Grant.