Issue - meetings

Report of the Corporate Director for People

Julia Holmes and Chris Ayriss, Senior Commercial Business Partners, presented the report, which detailed the 2022/23 Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG) outturn position and the updated reserve balance and associated commitments. They highlighted the following information:

(a)  the 2022/23 initial schools budget, as reported at Schools Forum on 25 January 2022, was £324.535m. The Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) made in-year funding adjustments to the allocation of £321,000 resulting in a final budget of £324.856m for 2022/23;

(b)  a breakdown of the figures within the outturn summary of Table 2 is given to the Forum;

(c)  the underspend of £598,000 on the pupil growth fund in 2022/23 is mainly due to the remaining balance of the Schools Block of £427,000 that could not be equitably allocated to all schools through the National Funding Formula (NFF) during the budget process, being allocated to the pupil growth fund. This approach was agreed by the Forum in on 7 December 2011 in the report entitled “Proposed pupil growth allocation for 2022/23;

(d)  the underspend of £15,000 on the trade union cover is mainly due to the union not taking up all of its allotted allowance in 2022/23. The underspend will be taken into account when calculating the rate of trade union cover for the financial year 2024/25;

(e)  there is an underspend variance of £56,000 within the Central Schools Service Block. This is mainly due to Virtual School funding being substituted by funding from the Pupil Premium Plus Grant (PPPG);

(f)  in the Early Years Block spending, there is a total underspend of £347,000. There is an underspend of £142,000 in the funding for 2-year old funding for schools/providers. This is reflective of the slightly lower than expected participation rates in 2022/23 with 79% of applications being eligible with an average of 146.6 applications per month. The breakdown of applications for the year are as follows; Parents Applications – 55%, Family Information Service (FIS) – 26%, Childcare Providers – 15%, and Schools – 4%. The early learning programme for 2-year olds is the most frequent enquiry, representing 53% of all FIS activity;

(g)  the final position of 3 and 4-year olds funding shows a £100,000 overspend in 2022/23 which reflects the higher than anticipated participation rate;

(h)  the Early Years Pupil Premium achieved a small underspend of £4,000 which is close to the budgeted participation rate;

(i)  there continues to be significantly fewer applications for early years Disability Access Funding (DAF) compared to the Department for Education (DfE) projections underpinning the funding level. The underspend of £82,000 has been ring-fenced in reserves as there is an expectation from the DfE that this will be spent to support the inclusion of pupils with Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND);

(j)  the underspend on the SEN Inclusion Fund (SEN IF) is anticipated and has been ring-fenced in reserves ready for distribution to settings to help support heightening speech, language and communication needs. With the revised eligibility criteria for the SEND IF, this eliminates any significant  ...  view the full minutes text for item 32