Agenda item

The report of Grant Davis (Schools Strategic Financial Support Manager) seeks to update the Forum on the schools revenue funding settlement and the budget setting process for 2020-21.  It also outlines the funding settlement announced on 19 December 2019 and the impact on school budgets arising from the settlement.

Grant Davis (Schools Strategic Financial Support Manager) referred to the report which should update Schools Forum on the revenue funding settlement and the budget setting process for 2020/21.  Grant highlighted the following:

·       The DfE had issued the revenue funding settlement for schools on 19 December 2019.  In the Autumn of 2019 the Government announced a pledge to boost schools and high needs funding which a cash increase of £14.5 billion over 3 years.  This was in addition to a further £700m for high needs funding nationally in 2020/21, a grant for the teacher’s pension scheme contributions for the next 3 years until 2022/23.  The Teacher’s pay award grant would continue for the 2020/21 year;

·       The DfE have continued to allocate funding based on the National Funding Formula (NFF) which should see all schools benefitting from the additional funding and we hope to hear soon about further grants, including Pupil Premium funding rates;

·       The provisional Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG) allocation for Wiltshire Council was £374.503 million which was an increase of £22,857 million from 2019/20.  This increase reflects the impact of the increase to the school’s block funding for the NFF and also incorporates the additional funding being pledged by the Government;

·       Wiltshire has experienced pupil growth increases, with just under 64,000 pupils being funded.  Schools block is calculated based on NFF figures published in October 2019 and they calculated primary and secondary units of funding which show an increase of 5.99% (primary) and 4.22% (secondary).  Included within the school’s block funding of £293.142 million is £2.604 million allocated for growth; 

·       The £2.479 million for central school’s block includes funding for agreed historic commitments;

·       The high needs block is based on the NFF of which a proportion is based upon historic spend and as we had previously been low on the historic spend we continue to receive low funding for this element of the NFF;

·       The early years block reflects hourly rates for 2020/21 and it should be noted that the early years block will be updated during the 2020/21 financial year to reflect the January 2020 and January 2021 early years census data;

·       The funding regulations do allow for a transfer of funding between the school’s block and other blocks within the DSG.  Local Authorities have the flexibility to move up to 0.5%.  Anything higher would require approval from the Secretary of State (SoS) through a disapplication request, which has been applied for.  We should hear about this request in early February.  In 2019/20 the SoS approved our request for a transfer of £2.2 million (0.8%);

A Forum Member asked for details of the amount of the disapplication request made.  Grant reported that this request was made in November (before the funding allocation was announced) was for an approval to transfer up to 1.58% between school’s block and high needs block.

·       Following the removal of the Education Services Grant in August 2017, a School Improvement Monitoring and Brokering Grant was introduced.  Funding was set for 3 years from 2017/18, but it was not yet known if this would continue beyond 2019/20;

·       Local Authorities are required to submit the proposed delegated budget for schools to the ESFA by January 2020 and then all schools and academies will be notified in February 2020; and

·       As agreed at the December meeting of the Forum, the maintained schools voted for the de-delegation of services to continue in 2020/21 and this would be considered later in the meeting.

Resolved:

That Schools Forum note the report.