Agenda item

The report of Grant Davis (Schools Strategic Financial Support Manager) seeks to seeks to update the Forum on the revenue funding settlement and the budget setting process for 2021-22.

Grant Davis (Schools Strategic Financial Support Manager) referred to the report which sought to update Schools Forum on the revenue funding settlement and the budget setting process for 2021/22.  Grant highlighted the following:

·       The DfE had issued the revenue funding settlement for schools on 17 December 2020;

·       In the Autumn of 2019, the Government announced its pledge to boost schools and high needs funding over a 3-year period - £2.6 billion in 2020-21, - £4.8 billion in 2021-22 (increase by £2.2bn) and £7.1 billion in 2022-23 (increase by £2.3bn.  In addition, a further £700 million was pledged for high needs nationally in 2020-21 and a further £730 million for 2021-22;

·       The DfE have continued to allocate school funding on the basis of the NFF which should see all schools benefitting from the additional funding.  The 2021-22 year is another “soft” year with Schools Forum still retaining its role in determining the school funding allocation methodology;

·       The introduction of mandatory minimum per pupil funding levels for the 2020-21 year have been continued and the rates have increased for the 2021-22 year to £4,180 for Primary and £5,415 for Secondary.  These figures incorporate and include the teachers’ pay and pension grants will cease at end of 20-2021 year – this means that these two grants will be baselined into schools’ core funding at a value of £14.179m for 2021-22;

·       It was a surprise to hear from the DfE that the numbers of eligible Pupil Premium Grant funding pupils would be taken from the October 2020 census and not the January 2021 census;

·       The provisional Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG) allocation for Wiltshire was £406.342 million which was an increase of £31.839m compared with 2020-21;

·       The overall uplift in ‘real’ funding for comparative purposes is 4.47%, split as Schools - 3.55%, Central – -0.98%, High Needs – 9.68%, Early Years – 4.96%;

·       Included within the Schools Block funding of £317.724m is the amount of £1.814m allocated on the basis of pupil growth within Wiltshire;

·       The DfE have stipulated that the funding awarded through the Teachers Pay and Pension elements must be excluded when considering any transfers between the Schools’ Block and other Blocks. Therefore, any transfer would be based upon the Net Funding figure of £303.545 million, not the Total funding figure of £317.724 million;

·       There had been an uplift in funding for all of the blocks except for the central schools’ services block;

·       Included within the Wiltshire allocation is £0.805m for the Teachers Pay and Pension funding for Special Schools and High Needs settings. This has been equated to an uplift of £660 per place to be added to the current funding in Special Schools;

·       The DfE continue with their commitment to reviewing the High Needs NFF and a consultation is proposed with the initial changes expected to be reflected in 2022-23.  The review will cover all factors of the High Needs NFF including the ‘Historic Spend’ factor and also the weightings applied to each factor.  Schools Forum members will be asked to respond to the consultation when it has been issued and circulated;

·       The funding regulations do allow for a transfer of funding between the schools’ block and other blocks within the DSG of up to 0.5% with the agreement of Schools Forum (this had been previously agreed);

·       Local Authorities were required to submit their proposed delegated budget for schools in their areas by 21 January 2021 (today) to the DfE who would then confirm the formula is compliant with the funding regulations.  The DfE will then confirm the budgets to academies with the LA also needing to notify maintained schools of their budget shares by the end of February 2021; and

·       It had been agreed by the maintained schools’ representatives at  the December meeting of Schools Forum that the de-delegation of services would continue in 2021-22.

An early years representative reported that he felt that in paragraph 17 of the report to state that early years had an increase of 4.96% was misleading.  Whilst it was an increase on the previous year’s funding, over the last 4 years there had been no increase for pay and pension and that their funding was in fact decreasing.  Grant Davis responded this figure had been included for comparative purposes across all of the blocks and that early years would change over the year as it was not fixed like the other blocks.

Resolved:

That Schools Forum note the report.