Agenda and minutes

Caroline Caille

David Hooker

Stephen McLaren

Tracey Ydlibi

None.

Minutes of the meeting held on 7 December 2017, to be confirmed.

The minutes of the meeting held on 7 December 2017 were agreed as a correct record and were signed by the Chair.

The work programme was noted.

Presentation by Nick Lee, Head of Access and Inclusion

Nick Lee, Head of Access and Inclusion, gave a presentation to the Forum on place planning for Nottingham’s secondary phase requirements, highlighting the following:

(a)  primary school capacity in the city has been expanded since 2009, with additional capacity of approximately 4,000 new places funded through a capital programme of approximately £40 million;

(b)  new capacity was achieved through added capacity to existing buildings, refurbishments of mothballed premises such as Lenton Primary and delivery of 3 new build school sites;

(c)  the final primary expansion is now underway with 2 outstanding projects at Middleton and Glade Hill primaries. Nearly 95% of Nottingham children were offered their first or second choice of school for a start in September 2017;

(d)  any additional housing projects are kept under review to see if additional capacity will be needed, and to see if costs can be accrued from developers through Section 106 contributions;

(e)  projections against current school capacities show a shortfall of Year 7 places at secondary level in some areas from 2018 and citywide from 2019, if no further places are added. Approximately 15-17 new forms of entry will be required by 2022 which is when the demand will peak;

(f)  increased pressure on places in Nottinghamshire means that fewer Nottingham City pupils are now attending Nottinghamshire schools, which adds additional pressure;

(g)  ensuring that the supply of school places meets local demand remains a statutory duty of local authorities, even though they are no longer able to open new schools, and so rely on the expansion of existing schools or the opening of new Free Schools or Academies;

(h)  the council is striving to meet the need for school places in a way that promotes parental choice and diversity, enabling access to good schools close to home and so is in discussion with good and outstanding secondary schools and multi-academy trusts to identify solutions;

(i)  a number of secondary schools have reduced their admission numbers in recent years, primarily for performance reasons. These schools have been asked to be mindful of the need for additional capacity in the city and one has now increased its admission number again;

(j)  agreement can be difficult due to the fragmented nature of secondary schools, with a mixture of national multi-academy trusts and smaller multi-academy trusts, who have different aspirations;

(k)  the Basic Need allocation for the city is very limited and falls well short of delivering the required capacity. This is because a number of secondary schools currently still have surplus capacity. The authority is in discussions with the Department for Education around the city’s needs;

(l)  the local authority is unable to set up free schools. There is a local authority led school presumption competition route available but this requires a site and capital upfront which the local authority is unable to offer;

(m)the Local Authority has commissioned a review of some secondary schools to assess sufficiency. Trinity School has added one additional form of entry from September 2017, and NUAST is  ...  view the full minutes text for item 16.

Joint report of the Corporate Director for Children and Adults and the Director of Strategic Finance

Ceri Walters, Head of Commercial Finance, introduced the report presenting the proposed Schools Budget for 2018/19, highlighting the following:

(a)  based on the illustrative figures provided by the Department for Education (DfE), Nottingham City schools will receive £9.8m protection as a result of the 1% funding floor guarantee in 2019/20;

(b)  the Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG) received for the financial year 2018/19 is £265,352 and is based on the October 2017 census. This is distributed between 4 blocks for Schools, Central Schools Services, Early Years and High Needs as per the table below:

(c)  there has been an increase in funding for 3 & 4 year olds of 8p per hour for providers, and an increase of 5p per hour for 2 year olds. A contingency has been built in for the deprivation factor of 23% based on current data;

(d)  the budget will be formally approved by the Council in February. Draft budgets by school will be issued by 28^th February 2018 and confirmed by 31^st March 2018;

Members of the Forum thanked Ceri for her presentation, and noted the quality clarity of the information provided.

RESOLVED to

(1)  Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG)

(a)  note the overall indicative 2018/19 Schools Budget to be spent incorporating the Schools, Central Schools Services, Early Years and High Needs blocks is £266.710m;

(b)  note this is funded by the provisional 2018/19 DSG allocation of £265.352m plus £1.716m from the DSG reserve and other grants;

(c)  note that the budget will be updated in year to reflect subsequent adjustments made by the ESFA to the 2018/19 DSG allocation;

(d)  note that any balance remaining will be allocated to the Statutory School Reserve;

(e)  note the impact to schools budgets of the indicative allocation:

(2)  note the allocation of Pupil Premium funding will be allocated to schools in accordance with the grant conditions.