Agenda item

GOVERNMENT ANNOUNCEMENTS ON ADDITIONAL SCHOOL FUNDING

Report attached.

Minutes:

A report presented to the Forum gave details of the Prime Minister’s announcements of a £14 billion cash boost for schools.  This was an additional £2.6 billion of funding in 2020/21, with £700 million of this being for high needs, £2.2 billion in 2021/22 and £2.3 billion in 2022/23.  This funding will cover the growth in the number of pupils and pay awards including the proposed increased starting salary of teachers to £30,000 by 2022/23. Primary Schools are to receive a minimum of £3,750 per pupil which is set to rise to £4,000 in 2021/22 and Secondary schools are to receive a minimum of £5,000 per pupil.

 

The minimum funding guarantee will be set at 0.5% per pupil and the gains cap will be removed with the core factors of the National Funding Formula (NFF) to rise by 4%. This will be a formulaic factor for pupil mobility instead of on the basis of historic spending for fairer allocations for all authorities and protection will be implemented for the pupil growth and falling rolls fund to ensure it doesn’t reduce by more than 0.5% of the schools block allocation.

 

This formula model based on lagged growth disadvantaged Havering and the allocation would reduce the Pupil Growth Fund to £1.63m from the current £2.5m.  Options on funding schools for future pupil growth would be brought to the next meeting.

 

The forum was presented with the “Schools Revenue funding 2020 to 2021 Operational Guide September 2019” which was published by the Education & Skills Funding Agency (EFSA). The guide helps Local Authorities and Schools to plan the implementation of the funding system for the 2020/21 financial year. The EFSA will publish the NFF allocations to LAs in early October 2019. After that, the EFSA will then use the NFF to calculate the blocks within the Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG) and it will be allocated to LAs in December 2019.

 

The NFF will be updated with new factor values and other technical changes in 2020/21 and this will be detailed in the NFF technical note and policy documented due to be published in October 2019.  In line with the forecast GDP deflator, the funding floor will be set at 1.84% to protect pupil –led per-pupil funding and will be based on the individual schools’ NFF allocation in 2019/20. It was noted that the free school meals factor will stay at the inflation rate. There will be no NFF gains cap but LAs will still be able to use a cap for their local formulae for affordability.

 

The NFF will continue to pay the teachers’ pay grant and the teachers’ pension grant separately in 2020/21; the rates to be published by the EFSA in due course. The high needs funding floor will be set at 8% and the gains cap will be set at 17%. The guide states the government’s intention to move to a single ‘hard’ NFF to determine every school’s budget. The Forum noted that David Allen will present and explain the relationship between the minimum funding guarantee, the floor protection and the 4% factor increases (paragraph 9 of the guide) at the next meeting after the indicative funding allocations had been received form the DfE.

 

The guide states that LAs must continue to engage in open and transparent consultation with maintained schools and academies regarding any changes to the Local Funding Formula and any principles adopted and any movement of funds between blocks. The pre-16 formula must have sufficient time from the LAs processes for political approval before the APT deadline in January 2020.

 

The DfE will publish updated schools block databases in December 2019 where LAs must allocate at least 80% of the DSG funding through pupil-led factors (factors 18.1 to 18.7 listed on page 8 in the guide). The AWPU rate for primary age pupils must be at least £2,000 and there can be different rates for KS3 and KS4 age pupils with a minimum of £3,000 for each. LAs can use free school meals (FSM and FSM6), the income deprivation affecting children index (IDACI) or both to calculate their deprivation factor.

 

The guide shows the table below which sets out an equation to show the per-pupil funding of £3,750 for each individual primary school and £5,000 each individual secondary school.

Text Box: (number of primary year groups × £3,750) + (number of KS3 year groups × £4,800) + (number of KS4 year groups × £5,300) divided by Total number of year groups

 

LAs can apply the prior attainment factor (which is optional) for primary pupils who are not achieving the expected level of development in the early years foundation stage profile (EYFSP) and secondary pupils who are not reaching the expected standard in KS2 at either reading, writing or mathematics. Since 2017/18, the EFSA have taking into consideration pupils who sat the harder KS2 tests to not allow that to negatively impact their results in the prior attainment factor in the mainstream formula.

 

The EFSA states they expect LAs to present any pupil variations to their Schools Forum as this may be expensive for the school’s block. The minimum funding guarantee (MFG) model options will be presented to the Forum once the relevant data is available.

 

The deadline for LAs to submit an application to disapply the MFG for 2020/21 is 11 October 2019. Havering has submitted applications to disapply the MFG in the previous 3 years with all applications being turned down. Havering currently spends £2.5 million on MFG with £1 million of that in 2 secondary schools.

 

The LA would not be seeking movement between the DSG Schools and High Needs blocks because there should be sufficient funding in the new financial year due to the funding boost from central government.  The DfE also requires LAs to have a recovery plan in place when the DSG is in deficit by more than 1%. The guide lists the services that may be held centrally and de-delegated on page 47, paragraph 250.

 

It was stated that Havering’s DSG may end the financial year in deficit but will receive additional funding in the new financial year.

 

The Schools Funding Forum noted the report and appendices.

 

Supporting documents: