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.