Agenda item

To consider any other items of business, which the Chair agrees to consider as a matter of urgency.

Prior to the start of the meeting the Chair had agreed that a report entitled “Local Consultation – School Improvement Services 2023-24” could be shared with Schools Forum under agenda item 17 – Urgent Items.  The report which sought to update Schools Forum with the results of the recent consultation with maintained schools relating to the removal of the Local Authority Monitoring and Brokering Grant 2023-24 was shown on the screen and the meeting and then circulated post meeting via Agenda supplement 2 on 11 October 2022.

Grant Davis (Schools Strategic Financial Support Manager) referred to the report and highlighted the following:

·         The DfE released its consultation on ‘Reforming how local authorities’ school improvement functions are funded’ in late October 2021.  The two key questions of the DfE consultation were to:

a)    Remove the Local Authority Monitoring & Brokering Grant (LAMB), which is currently allocated to local authorities to support school improvement activities; and

b)   Make provisions within the School and Early Years Finance (England) Regulations for the financial year (FY) 2022-23 to allow local authorities to fund all their school improvement activity (including all core school improvement activities) via de-delegation from schools’ budget shares.

·         The LAMB has been provided to local authorities since 2017, to help fulfil their core improvement activities, which was based upon the number of maintained schools.  The proposals from the DfE, to reduce the grant by 50% in 2022-23, with full removal in the 2023-24 year were approved, following the consultation.  As a result, Wiltshire’s funding fell from.

a.    £459,000 in the 2021-22 year

b.    £229,500 in the 2022-23 year

c.    £0 for the 2023-24 year 

·         Local authorities were provided with the opportunity to fund improvement services through either de-delegation of maintained schools’ budgets or on a traded basis.  To provide Schools Forum with a steer, a local consultation was arranged to provide a basket of options for potential funding of the loss of the LAMB grant.  In January 2022 maintained members of Schools Forum agreed to de-delegate monies from their budgets, to cover the drop in funding for the LAMB.  This de-delegation was agreed to ensure that School Effectiveness service provided to maintained schools would not be compromised;

·         To provide Schools Forum with information, a local consultation was arranged to provide several options with schools being asked to rank each of the options in order of priority.  This consultation was open to all maintained schools and a total of 11 responses were received – 1 secondary school and 10 primary schools.  The options for schools were as below:

• Eight of the schools so that no funding for the loss of the LAMB grant was their least preferred option, five schools expressing a preference for the existing service to be maintained with schools funding 100% of the LAMB and four schools preferring to continue at the current funding level with 50% of the costs being funding by schools in 2023-24;

• The consultation sent to maintained schools only closed on 5 October (day before the meeting)  hence why this report was not able to be shared with Schools Forum in advance of the meeting with the Agenda papers;

• The views of Schools Forum were being sought as to their feelings on the funding of the LAMB grant going forward;

The Chair asked when would a decision need to be made by the maintained schools in relation to the LAMB grant?  Officers needed to have information as soon as possible in order for then to be able to shape the School Effectiveness Teams etc and whilst the timescale was quite short they fully accepted that this was not a long consultation period and that Schools Forum members may wish to go away and have conversations with their maintained school colleagues before giving their views on these issues.

A primary school Governor representative felt that the response of only 11 schools was low and that with no prior notice she would not be happy for a decision to be made as it was an important decision and so suggested that the consultation be extended in order for more maintained schools to be given the opportunity to respond and share their views.

Grant Davis responded that they do not usually see a big response in consultation in relation to de-delegation and would think that a 30% response was good – however he accepted that the 10% response in this case was low.  Grant agreed that the consultation could be extended and that they could look at all avenues of getting the information out to schools to hopefully get a better response.  It was confirmed that the consultation was shared with the recent Headteacher/Governor/School Business Manager briefings.

It was suggested that the consultation could be raised at WASSH and PHF meetings next week to encourage further consultation responses.

Helean Hughes (Director – Education & Skills) confirmed that the consultation could be extended as they did want to hear from as many schools as possible to enable an informed decision.

Andrew Best (Head of School Effectiveness) suggested that they could look to hold an engagement session with schools before the end of term.

Resolved:

That the consultation on the future of the LAMB grant be extended on Right Choice and Officers would attempt to arrange an engagement session for maintained schools to attend before the end of Term 1.

Post meeting admin note - A final decision will be taken in the December 2022 Schools Forum meeting, however by extending the consultation period, a greater response rate is anticipated to provide an indicative position for the Maintained Schools representatives to consider.

An indicative position will help steer the Director of Education and Skills and her team to strategically plan for the future delivery of the service.