Agenda and minutes

Andy Jenkins, Maintained Primary Schools

Sean Kelly, Special Academies

Patricia Lewis, Maintained Special Schools

Janet Molyneux, Maintained Primary Schools

Cath Rowell, Secondary Academies

Terry Smith, Maintained Primary Schools

Sheena Wheatley, Trade Unions

Bob White, Secondary Academies

Councillor Neghat Khan, Portfolio Holder for Early Years, Education & Skills

None.

Minutes of the meeting held on 3 December 2019, for approval

The Forum confirmed the minutes of the meeting held on 3 December 2019 as a correct record and these were signed by the Chair.

Joint Report of the Corporate Director for People and the Chief Finance Officer

Julia Holmes, Senior Commercial Business Partner, introduced the report collating details of the responses to the consultation with schools following the Secretary of State for Education’s September 2019 announcement on funding arrangements for 2020/21.

Nottingham City Council will continue to distribute funding to individual schools in 2020/21 in line with the National Funding Formula (NFF) and to adopt the changes to the formula introduced in 2020/21, including:

·  A new mobility formula;

·  Minimum Funding Guarantee (MFG) of between 0.5% and 1.84% per pupil;

·  No cap on gains under the NFF.

Resolved to

(1)  note the content of the proposed schools funding formula for 2020/21 in the consultation document;

(2)  note the consultation responses received from Nottingham City schools and the significantly low response rate;

(3)  note the Local Authority’s proposal to distribute funding to schools in 2020/21 in line with the 2020/21 NFF.

Joint report of the Corporate Director for People and the Chief Finance Officer

Kathryn Stevenson, Senior Commercial Business Partner, introduced the report presenting the proposed Schools Budget for 2020/21. The Budget has been prepared in line with the parameters agreed at Schools Forum and with the financial regulations issued by the Department for Education.

Nottingham City has received the maximum 17% increase per head for High Needs, which would have been £5.2m higher had there not been a national cap on gains. This allows for a High Needs budget to be set within the allocation with no need to use reserves or a Schools Block Transfer.

The Education and Skills Funding Agency has reduced its allocation for historic commitments of Central Expenditure in the Central Schools Services Block by 20%.

The Chair stressed the importance of ongoing discussions regarding the contributions to the Central Schools Services Block’s historic commitments when preparing for future budgets.

Resolved to

(1)  note the overall indicative 2020/21 Schools Budget to be spent incorporating the Schools, Central Schools Services, Early Years and High Needs blocks is £289.303m, as below:

(2)  note this is funded by the provisional 2020/21 DSG allocation of £287.776m, the reimbursement of £0.237m funding paid to academies for pupil growth April to August 2020 and £1.060m from the Statutory School Reserve;

(3)  note that the budget will be updated in year to reflect subsequent adjustments made by the ESFA to the 2020/21 DSG allocation;

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

(5)  note the impact to schools budgets of the indicative allocation as set out below:

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

Tuesday 25 February 2020

Tuesday 28 April 2020

Tuesday 23 June 2020

The Forum noted the remaining meetings of the 2019/20 academic year on the following Tuesdays at Loxley House:

25 February 2020

28 April 2020

23 June 2020