Agenda and minutes

To note any apologies, substitutions and changes to the membership of the Forum.

Apologies were received from Jo Grenfell (Observer- Post 16 – Wiltshire College), and Georgina Keily-Theobald (Maintained Special School representative).

Apologies were also received from Jane Davies (Cabinet Member for Adult Social Care, SEND, Transition and Inclusion), Jackie Day (Early Years Observer), Laura Mayes (Cabinet Member – Children, Education and Skills) and Lucy Townsend (Corporate Director – People/Director of Children’s Services).

Substitutions

Lynn Yendle was substituting for Jon Hamp

Nikki Bennet was substituting for Jo Grenfell.

Membership changes

Welcome to Lyssy Bolton who is the new Early Years representative (replacing Mark Cawley).  Welcome to Ros Sutton who is the new second primary school Governor representative.

To approve as a correct record and sign the minutes of the meeting held on 9 December 2021 (copy attached).

The minutes of the previous meeting held on 9 December 2021 were approved. 

Resolved: 

That the Chairman approve and sign the minutes of the meeting of Schools forum held on 9 December 2021.   

To receive any announcements from the Chair.

The Chair made the following announcements:

Meeting arrangements for Schools Forum

It had been previously agreed that the December and January meetings of Schools Forum would be held in person at County Hall as it was felt to be easier to make budget decisions around the table, but in response to the national and local Covid rates at the current time this meeting was requested again by the majority to be held virtually. 

Passing of a colleague

Schools Forum would like to express its condolences to the family and colleagues of Hazel Ryan.  Hazel sadly passed away unexpectedly on 13^th December 2021 and leaves behind 2 daughters and 2 lovely grand children.  In her role as a School Support Accountant and Strategic Financial Advisor, Hazel had supported all schools in Wiltshire during her 30 year career.  She had also supported Schools Forum with preparing and presenting reports, training Headteachers, training Governors and training School Business Managers.  Her experience and dedication to supporting Wiltshire schools has been invaluable and she will be missed by all of us.

To note any declarations of interests.

There were no interests declared.

Schools Forum welcomes contributions from members of the public. During the ongoing Covid-19 situation the Forum is operating revised procedures and the public are able participate in meetings online after registering with the officer named on this agenda, and in accordance with the deadlines below. A maximum of 15 minutes will be allocated to public participation at the start of each meeting.

Guidance on how to participate in this meeting online

Statements

Members of the public who wish to submit a statement in relation to an item on this agenda should submit this is electronically to the officer named on this agenda no later than 5pm on Tuesday 18 January 2022 (1 clear working day before the meeting).  Statements should take no longer than 3 minutes to be read aloud.

Questions

Those wishing to ask questions are required to give notice of any such questions electronically to the officer named on the front of this agenda no later than 5pm on Thursday 13 January 2022 to allow a response to be formulated.  Questions are limited to a maximum of 2 per person or organisation. 

Please contact the named officer on the front of this agenda for further advice.

No questions or statements were received in advance of the meeting.

The Forum will be asked to note the minutes/updates from the following meetings:

·         Early Years Reference Group – 5 January 2022 (to follow)

·         Joint meeting of the School Funding Working Group and SEN Working Group – 10 January 2022 – (attached).

The Forum noted the update received by way of the minutes of the meeting of the Early Years Reference Group meeting held on 5 January 2022.

There were no questions arising. 

The Forum noted the update received by way of the minutes of the meeting of the School Funding and SEN working group held on 10 January 2022.

There were no questions arising. 

Resolved:

That Schools Forum note the minutes of the Early Years Reference group meeting on 5 January 2022 and the joint meeting of the School Funding and SEN working group held on 10 January 2022.

The report of Grant Davis (Schools Strategic Financial Support Manager) seeks to update Schools Forum on the DfE’s response to the consultation ‘Reforming how Local Authorities School Improvement functions are funded’ and provides feedback from the local consultation sessions.

Grant Davis (Schools Strategic Financial Support Manager) referred to the report which sought to update Schools Forum on the DfE’s response to the consultation ‘Reforming how Local Authorities School Improvement functions are funded’ and provides feedback from the local consultation sessions and highlighted the following:

·         The DfE released its consultation on 29 October 2021 with a closing date for responses of 26 November 2021.  The Schools Funding and SEN Working Group met to discuss a response – this was shared with schools and all schools, governors and other stakeholders were encouraged to also respond to the consultation;

·         The School Improvement Monitoring and Brokering Grant (SIMB) Grant had been provided to local authorities since 2017 to help fulfil their core school improvement activities;

·         The DfE published the results of the consultation on 11 January 2022 and confirmed that they would be reducing the SIMB Grant by 50% in 2022-23 and would remove in full in 2023-24.  They would also allow local authorities to fund their school improvement activity via de-delegation from school’s budget shares;

·         The consultation was well supported with 565 responses which included a significant number from Wiltshire of 40 responses (over 7% of all responses);

·         The DfE consider that the SIMB Grant had been primarily used for providing improvement functions including early support and challenge to improve school performance rather than for exercising formal intervention powers;

·         Schools had felt that there was a strong argument in favour of early intervention to prevent the need for having to exercise formal intervention, however this appears to have carried little weight for the future funding of the grant;

·         The DfE currently expect MAT’s and academies to fund this cost from their budgets and for this reason they believe it is right to move towards removing this grant and put school improvement funding on a more even footing;

·         The Secretary of State would retain the power to approve the de-delegation contrary to decisions of the Schools Forum if they were satisfied that the Council had demonstrated that such de-delegation was necessary to ensure the Council is adequately funded to exercise core school improvement activities;

·         Obviously, most of the responses to consultation wished for the SIMB Grant to continue, however removal would bring funding arrangements for local authorities’ school improvement activity closer in line with academies and would enable Councils to better adjust over tie to the Governments long term ambition for all schools to become academies;

·         The DfE would update the Schools Causing Concern guidance to ensure that there was more clarity on the core school improvement functions going forward;

·         Following a local consultation to gain a steer of opinion - at the December meeting of the Forum, maintained school representatives were asked to give their views and they had asked for the decision to be deferred to this meeting to enable them to carry out further consultation with their maintained school colleagues to gain a broader response;

·         The Primary Heads Forum Executive liaised with its members and the Director of Education and  ...  view the full minutes text for item 55.

To consider the budget for 2022-23.

The following update reports provide details on the overall funding settlement on each of the funding blocks, the decisions will be made after consideration of all the update papers via the decision matrix.

The report of Grant Davis (Schools Strategic Financial Support Manager) seeks to update the Forum on the revenue funding settlement and the budget setting process for 2022-23.

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 2022-23 and highlighted the following:

·           The DfE had issued the revenue funding settlement for schools on 16 December 2021;

·           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, a further £730 million for 2021-22 and £780m for 2022-23;

·           The DfE have continued to allocate school funding on the basis of the National Funding Formula (NFF) which should see all schools benefitting from the additional funding.  Nationally, the Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG) shows an average increase of 3.2% in the pupil-led funding factors compared to 2021-22.  The 2022-23 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 2022-23 year to £4,265 for Primary and an average of £5,576 for Secondary.  The mandatory minimum per pupil funding levels represents a step towards the introduction of a ‘hard’ formula, where national rates must be implemented without allowing for local discretion;

·           Following the (DfE) consultation in 2021, further guidance regarding a move towards a ‘hard’ formula is expected between now and 2024-25;

·           The Minimum Funding Guarantee (MFG) threshold has been adjusted to ensure that all schools gain through the allocations per pupil and it is proposed that this be set at +2%;

·           The Sparsity factor has seen the greatest changes of all formula factors.  The NFF has increased the maximum sparsity values by £10,000, calculated sparsity distances based on road distances and applied a sparsity taper (making those eligible where the school has a sparsity distance 20% below the main threshold);

·           Data for pupils who are eligible for FSM6 funding is now taken from the October census rather than the previous January school census’

·           The low prior attainment data from 2019 would be used as a proxy for the assessments which would have taken place in 2020 and 2021 but didn’t due to Covid;

·           The DfE will pay business rates on behalf of all schools from 2022-23 removing the need for schools to pay their own business rates and then recover the funding;

·           There was to be a slight uplift in rates of the Pupil Premium Grant with the numbers of those eligible being taken from the October 2021 census and not the January 2022 census;

·           The provisional Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG) allocation for Wiltshire was £422,409,451m which was an increase of £16,067,591m compared with 2022-23;

·           The overall uplift in ‘real’ funding for comparative purposes is 3.95%, split as Schools - 3.42%, Central – 1.52%, High  ...  view the full minutes text for item 56a

The report of Marie Taylor (Head of Finance – Children & Education) seeks to update the Forum on issues relating to the Central Schools Services Block (CSSB) budget for 2022-23 and the decisions that need to be made as part of the budget setting process.

Marie Taylor (Head of Finance – Children and Education) referred to the report which sought to update Schools Forum on issues relating to the central school’s block budget for 2022-23 and the decisions that would need to be made as part of the budget setting process.  Marie highlighted the following:

·         The central school services block budget allocation was £2.604m and this had been calculated using the NFF which applies a unit value of £35.96 to the pupil numbers from the October 2021 census.  Funding for historic commitments for 2022-23 is then added to the amount of funding generated by the formula to give the overall total CSSB;

·         As allocations were published earlier than usual in July 2021 this budget was agreed in principle at the December 2021 meeting of the Forum;

·         Schools Forum approval is required on a line by line basis for the group of services which are funded from central schools’ block

·         Section A related to copyright licences and no decision was required by Schools Forum;

·         Section B related to services previously funded by the Education Services Grant (ESG) and the additional pension costs of centrally retained teachers.  Pay inflation at 2% was provided as a best estimate; and

·         Section C related to historical commitments  with the overall total of £0.293m being allocated.

Resolved:

That Schools Forum note the change to the copyright licence cost for 22-23 and reduction in the contribution to the high needs block in the report from the previous financial year and the required decisions to the central school’s block budget for 2022-23 later in the meeting when all information has been received.

The report of Marie Taylor (Head of Finance – Children & Education) seeks to update the Forum on issues relating to the High Needs block for 2022-23 and the decisions that will need to be made as part of the budget setting process for 2022-23.

Marie Taylor (Head of Finance – Children and Education) referred to her report which sought to update Schools Forum on issues related to the high needs block and the decisions that would need to be made as part of the budget setting process for 2022-23 and highlighted the following:

·         The budget proposal for the high needs block was approved in principle at meeting on 9 December 2021 and that the only changes since this are the now confirmed planned places for September 2022 and the DSG management plan in discussion with the DfE;

·         The high needs block allocation is £62.691m (which is an uplift of £5.161m – 8.97% on 2021-22).  In addition to the allocation, a later supplementary allocation of £2.415m had been added and this was to fund the cost burden of the health and social care levy and other cost pressures;

·         Estimated contract inflation of 4% for 2022-23 had been added and a 2% pay inflation for SEN teams;

·         £1m had been allocated to a temporary support fund to tackle the SEN waiting lists in schools and £100k was added to increase the Day 6 provision to reduce the risk of exclusion in primary schools;

·         An increase to the Inclusion Support Fund (ISF) was proposed to be funded by the high needs block at £180k in addition to the funding for the ISF from the early years block;

·         There was an estimated funding shortfall of £11,160m and it was anticipated that there would continue to be an overspend in 2022-23;

·         The DfE had allocated an amount of £325m as supplementary funding - £2.415m of which had been allocated to Wiltshire.  This was extra funding that recognises the additional costs that local authorities and schools will face in the coming year, which were not foreseen when the original high needs block allocations were calculated, including the Health and Social Care Levy.  Due to the lateness of this supplementary funding – detailed modelling had not taken place and Officers met with South West peers on 12 January to discuss and share modelling ideas;

·         The preferred approach was to set up interim arrangements supporting specialist planned places for 12 months during 2022-23 as well as allowing for increases in externally commissioned provision.  This would allow more time for consultation with schools and parent carers via the Wiltshire Parent Carer Council. The proposal would be a banding review with the supplementary funding increasing the ongoing base budget available for distribution.;

·         It was proposed to apply 3% to Special Schools overall funding, to apply 2% to mainstream specialist places and apply in addition to current top up rates and named pupil allowances to take into account the schools block supplementary funding.  It was highlighted that special schools had not received any funding increase for some time.  Also it was proposed to add 3% to the value of secondary alternative provision service level agreements, to increase further education top up budget by £1.038m and allocate 2% to offset externally commissioned fee increases; and

·         The  ...  view the full minutes text for item 56c

The report of Marie Taylor (Head of Finance – Children & Education) seeks to update the Forum on issues related to the Early Years Block for 2022-23 and the decisions that need to be made as part of the budget setting process for 2022-23.

Marie Taylor (Head of Finance – Children and Education) referred to the report which sought to update Schools Forum on issues related to the Early Years block for 2022-23 and the decisions that would need to be made as part of the budget setting process and highlighted the following:

·         In his 2021 Spending Review, the Chancellor announced a number of national increases to increase early years entitlements. For 2022-23 this would be £160m and this included uplifts to the 2, 3 and 4 year old rates as well as uplifts to the disability access fund and pupil premium.  The provisional early years block settlement for Wiltshire for 2022-23 was £28.521m;

·         The allocations for the free entitlement for 3 and 4 year olds and 2 year olds are based on the January 2021 census and would be updated during the 2022-23 year for the January 2022 census;

·         The operational guidance for early years entitlements: local authority funding of providers 2022-23 was published in December 2021 and this contained a number of key points for the local authority to include when they were funding their providers;

·         The Early Years Reference Group met on 5 January 2022 and considered a number of funding options attached as Appendix 1.  The consensus of the group was to support the local authority recommendation of option 3, to passport in full the 2-year-old disadvantaged rate of £5.69 per entitled hour an increase of 21p on the previous year and to set the 3 and 4 year old rate at £4.42 per entitled hour, an increase of 17p per hour on the previous year whilst providing a minimum of £50,000 contingency to absorb any increases in children throughout the 2022-23 financial year;

·         The Disability Access Fund is payable as a lump sum once a year per eligible child. If a child is splitting their entitlement between two or more providers, then parents should be asked to nominate the main setting. If a child receiving DAF moves from one setting to another within a financial year the new setting is not eligible to receive DAF for this child within the same financial year; and

·         Appendix 2 to the report were the calculations of compliance with a worked example showing 98.3% of pass through.  All demonstrated options would also have been compliant.

An Early Years representative expressed his thanks for the work of the Finance Team and for the agreement of option 3 of the funding of the rates.  He also asked that the Council make representatives to the DfE to ask them to consider paying the business rates of nurseries/early year settings on a de-delegated basis as they will now be doing for maintained nurseries in schools for consistency.  Marie Taylor agreed to consider the implications of this and raise with colleagues.

Resolved: That Schools Forum

1.  Note the update on the early years block and proposals in relation to the early years single funding formula and percentage pass through to providers:

     Local Authority preferred proposal:

i)             to increase  ...  view the full minutes text for item 56d

The report of Grant Davis (Schools Strategic Financial Support Manager) seeks to update the Forum on issues relating to the schools delegated budget for 2022-23 and the decisions that will need to be made as part of the budget setting process for 2022-23.  The report is to follow.

Grant Davis (Schools Strategic Financial Support Manager) referred to the report which sought to update Schools Forum on issues relating to the schools delegated budget for 2022-23 and the decisions that would need to be made as part of the budget setting process and highlighted the following:

·         The DfE had has allocated a schools’ block quantum to Wiltshire of £328.593m – this included funding of £1.913 million for the growth fund, based on the growth formula;

·         The changes to the Sparsity factor were shared with Schools Forum in October 2021 and an ‘in principle’ decision was agreed to implement the NFF methodology and funding values;

·         Modelling work has been prepared to calculate individual school budgets based on the proposed formula which was broadly similar to the formula for 2021-22 but the following changes should be noted:

Ø  An increase in Pupil and School led funding values of 3%

Ø  Minimum Funding Guarantee to be set between 0.5% and 2.0% to ensure all schools see a gain in funding on their pupil led funding (2% is proposed for 2022-23)

Ø  Maximum Sparsity funding being increased by £10,000 in both Primary and Secondary schools to £55,000 and £80,000 respectively to support small and rural schools

Ø  Sparsity distances to be measured using road distances rather than ‘as the crow flies’ and applying a distance taper for schools within 20% of the distance threshold

Ø  Increases in the minimum per pupil funding levels (MPPFL) to £4,265 and £5,525 in primary and secondary schools

·         Initial modelling suggests that the NFF is fully affordable for all schools in Wiltshire;

·         Since the introduction of the NFF the intention has been to try and move to replicate the formula in the ‘soft’ years.  Where the NFF values could not be afforded, the Free School Meal Ever6 (FSM6) factor was compromised to ensure the other factors were affordable – for the last three years the formula had been fully affordable;

·         Growth allocations for 2022-23 are based upon pupil growth data from the October 2021 census and the October 2020 census.  Criteria for growth was agreed at the December 2021 meeting of the Forum.  £1,913m was allocated from the DfE for the 2022-23 growth fund.  The growth of pupils was 340.5 for Primary and 633.5 for Secondary;

·         There were no plans to open any new schools in the 2022-23 year.  The growth fund supports new primary and secondary schools with diseconomy costs for the first 7 years or until the school is full.  The Basic Need Class Expansion for additional classes is still to be confirmed with colleagues in the School places team for the 2022-23 academic year.  The Infant Class Size increases have been confirmed for 2021-22 with four schools being funded through this factor.  Any surplus or deficit in the Growth Fund will form part of the overall DSG surplus or deficit balance;

·         Following the additional funding pledge, the DfE are seeking to ensure that all schools see an uplift in their calculated per pupil funding and  ...  view the full minutes text for item 56e

The report of Grant Davis (Schools Strategic Financial Support Manager) seeks to update Schools Forum and outline the level of additional funding and how it will be allocated to schools in the 2022-23 year.

Grant Davis (Schools Strategic Financial Support Manager) referred to the report which sought to update Schools Forum and outline the level of additional funding and how it would be allocated to schools in the 2022-23 year and highlighted the following:

·        Schools Forum had previously been advised of additional funding being made available for the 2022-23 year and now that the detail of that funding had been received;

·        In Autumn 2021, the Governments spending review confirmed an additional £1.6bn funding for schools and high needs, in addition to the previous funding pledges. Of the additional funding, £1.2bn has been allocated to schools in support of the costs of the Health and Social Care Levy (employers National Insurance increase of 1.25%) and the wider cost pressures in schools;

·        This supplementary grant would be paid to all maintained schools and academies from 1 April 2022;

·        For the 2022-23 year this would be paid as a supplementary grant and from 2023-24 this would be baselined into the core income;

·        Funding rates have been differentiated between early years pupils in maintained nurseries, mainstream 5-16 year-old pupils and post-16 pupils, with the bulk allocated to the mainstream 5-16 year-old pupils;

·        Funding would be allocated using the following three elements, which are already key components of the NFF, using data from the October 2021 census:
o A basic ‘per pupil’ rate based upon the ‘key stages’
o A lump sum paid to all schools (irrespective of size) - £3,680
o A per pupil rate for FSM6 pupils (different rates for primary and     secondary)

·        This funding would cover the increases in National Insurance (Health and Social Care Levy) and other cost pressures coming through such as inflation and unknown elements for pay awards going forward.  This was extra funding and helpful for schools.

An Early Years representative asked who the early years funding was payable to?  Grant Davis confirmed that maintained nurseries would receive this funding. 

Resolved:

That Schools Forum note the report.

The Forum will be asked to consider the Schools Budgets for 2022-23 and make relevant decisions using the decisions matrix which is to follow.

As this was a virtual meeting, the Chair suggested that it may be easier for Forum Members to use the ‘raise your hand’ function in Microsoft Teams if they were not in agreement to the decisions which were to be made in accordance with the Decisions matrix sheet. 

The Chair led the Forum though the Decision Matrix [TM1] [TM2] and the decisions as detailed below were made:

Resolved: That Schools Forum

Overall budget

1.     Agree to set the overall Schools Budget at the level of the DSG Settlement – namely £422,409,451.

Central Schools Services Block

2.     Agree as follows the Section B expenditure for the Central Schools Services:

i)       Education Welfare Service                         £0.203 million

ii)     Asset Management                                       £0.189 million

iii)    Statutory/Regulatory duties                       £0.682 million

iv)    Admissions                                                     £0.447 million

v)     Servicing of Schools Forum                       £0.003 million

vi)    Centrally retained Teachers

      additional pension costs                             £0.110 million

3.     Agree as follows the central spend on historic commitments (Section C):

i)       Funding for LAC Personal Education Plans be funded at £0.103 million;

ii)     Funding for Child Protection Officer in Schools Adviser at £0.058 million; and

iii)    Prudential Borrowing at £0.133 million.

4.    Note the Local Authority Decision (Section A) to set the budget at £0.409 million for central copyright licences for 2022-23.

5.    Note that these allocations allow a transfer of £0.227 million to support the high needs block.

Schools Block – Delegated Budget

6.     Agree to apply all the funding factors at the 2022-23 NFF rates.

7.     Agree to note the impact of the Sparsity factor and the increased number of schools now eligible. 

8.     Agree to set the Minimum Funding Guarantee at a level of +2.0%.

9.     Agree that the Growth fund be set at £0.725 million split as £0.1 million Infant Class Size and £0.625 million basic need.

10.  Agree to transfer up to a maximum of £1.642m (0.5%) from School’s block to High Needs block. 

11.  Agree that the budgets for De-delegation of central services be as follows:

i)       Access Budget Software                   £54,646

ii)     FSM Eligibility                                      £28,917

iii)    Trade Union                                          £70,000

iv)    EMAS & Travellers                            £564,508  (Primary only)

v)     Behaviour support                            £664,669  (Primary only)

vi)    Maternity supply                                £571,124

vii)  School Improvement                        £229,614*

12.  That agreement for the de-delegation of 11 vii) above is given by the maintained Primary Heads representatives present subject to there being a review of School Improvement services in the ensuing year.

High Needs Block  

13.  Agree that top up values for Named Pupil Allowances, Extended Learning Programmes, Resource Bases and Special Schools are to remain at the 2021-22 values and note the proposed consultation and review of High Needs formula proposed for the first quarter of 2022-23. 

14.  Note the pressures on the high needs block for 2022-23 and the potential options to reduce the shortfall against high needs budgets including agreeing a transfer from Schools Block to balance the high needs pressures.

15.  Note the continuation of recovery actions feeding into the DSG Management Plan and that this will be brought to a future Schools Forum  ...  view the full minutes text for item 57.

To confirm the dates of future meetings, as follows, all to start at 1.30pm:

17 March 2022 (if required)

9 June 2022

6 October 2022

8 December 2022.

The Forum noted that the future meetings would be held on:

17 March 2022 (if required)

9 June 2022

6 October 2022

8 December 2022.

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

There were no urgent items.