Agenda item

The report of Grant Davis and Bea Seggari (Schools Strategic Financial Support Team) seeks to outline the Department for Educations (DfE) funding proposals for schools and high needs in 2022-23.  The DfE published its document ‘The national funding formulae for schools and high needs – 2022-23’, in July 2021.

Grant Davis (Schools Strategic Financial Support Manager) referred to the report which outlined the DfE’s funding proposals for schools and high needs in 2022-23. Grant highlighted the following:

• There was positive news to report regarding funding for the 2022-23 year.  It would be the final year of the “Boris billions” with an extra £7.1bn which was an increase of £2.3bn on 2021-22;

• Indicative figures had been given based on the October 2020 census data.  The proposed total funding was £417M which was an uplift of almost £15.5M in 2021-22;

• There would be a 3% in uplift in Pupil-Led Factors led factors; the minimum per pupil funding level would increase by 2%, the FSM factor would increase by 2%; changes to sparsity would be reported later in the meeting;

• The October 2021 census (running today) would be used for calculating the Deprivation FSM6 funding rather than the previous January census which would reduce the lag;

• There was a proposed increase to the high needs block of 8% and the LA would still hopefully have the ability to transfer between blocks up to 0.5% of the budget, subject to Schools Forum approval;

• 2022-23 would be another “soft” year which would give Schools Forum the ability to determine how the Wiltshire’s funding methodology would work for that year.  The only mandatory factor for 2022-23 would be the application of the minimum per pupil funding levels being £4,265 in Primary and £5,525 in Secondary schools;

• As part of the budget setting process, when the final budget allocations had been confirmed to the LA in December, this would be put forward to Schools Forum in January for decision and then on to the Councilfor political ratification and approval in February 2022;

• Local authorities are required to submit the proposed delegated budget for schools in their areas to the DfE in January 2022. The DfE are required to confirm the formula is fully compliant with the funding regulations and then the budgets will be confirmed to academies during February 2022. The LA will need to notify maintained schools of their budget shares by the end of February 2022 as in previous years.

• The new approach introduced as part of the NFF for calculating the Growth funding would continue in the 2022-23 year. The County will be broken down into middle layer super output areas (MSOA’s) and the growth between the October 2021 census and October 2020 census would attract funding at £1,485 per primary pupil, £2,220 per secondary pupil and £70,800 for each new school (however there were no new schools in Wiltshire this year);

• The level of growth funding required and the size of the Growth Fund would be determined later in the year along with confirmation of the Growth funding criteria;

• As previously, there were a number of budgets included in the local formula that maintained schools only, can agree to de-delegate so that certain services continue to be provided centrally by the LA.  Schools Forum would be asked to take this decision on behalf of maintained schools based upon the results of the consultation responses;

• Mainstream schools and Academies would continue to receive a clearly identified budget for SEN (Notional SEN budget) and would be expected to use Notional SEN to meet the needs of their SEN pupils; and

• Schools Forum would be asked to consider sparsity funding and a separate report was to be presented later in the meeting which detailed the results of the DfE’s consultation on sparsity funding.

The Chair asked if Schools Forum would be asked to make “in principle” decisions at the December meeting in preparation for the decision making at the January 2022 meeting.  Grant Davis confirmed that this would be the case as it would enable them to model the budgets and create recommendations/options for decisions in January.

Resolved:

That Schools Forum note the report.