Agenda item

Joint report of Corporate Directors for People and Finance and Resources

Kathryn Stevenson and Julia Holmes (Senior Commercial Business Partners) presented the report, and stated the following:

a)  the report detailed the proposed Schools Budget for the financial year 2023/24, prepared in line with parameters agreed at a meeting of Schools Forum, and with the financial regulations issued by the Department for Education;

b)  as outlined in a report to 06 December 2022 Schools Forum meeting, for 2023/24, the LA has moved away from the standard approach of setting a Schools budget that balances the budgets by block to the Dedicated Schools Grant income received;

c)  this report incorporated further proposals in relation to the Early Years block, extending this approach in response to equivalent pressures in that sector;

d)  indicative individual school budgets, Early Years and High Needs funding allocations, along with guidance notes, would be issued by 28 February 2023.

e)  where applicable, the Local Authority’s Medium Term Financial Plan incorporated the impact from the Dedicated Schools Grant.

During discussion, members requested that their thanks to Kathryn and Julia, for the work done in respect of the Schools Budget, be recorded.

Resolved to note:

(1)  in respect of Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG):

(a)  the overall indicative 2023/24 Schools Budget to be spent incorporating the Schools, Central Schools Services (CSS), Early Years (EY) and Higher Needs (HN) blocks was £344.944m, funded by:

(i)  £342.836m of the provisional 2023/24 DSG allocation of £344.819m;

(ii)  reimbursement of £0.447m funding paid to academies for pupil growth for April to August 2023;

(iii)  £1.438m from DSG reserves to support the additional one-off distribution to mainstream schools, from the balance earmarked for distribution in conjunction with the SF sub-group;

(iv)  £0.148m from DSG reserves to support the 2023/24 SEN Inclusion Fund budget, from the balance earmarked for EY/EY Disability Access Funding;

(v)  £0.075m from DSG reserves to support a higher 2-year-old Base Rate for 2023/24, from the balance earmarked for EY;

(b)  that the budget would be updated in-year to reflect subsequent adjustments made by the ESFA to the 2023/24 DSG allocation, as detailed in the report;

(c)  that any balance remaining would be allocated to the Statutory School Reserve (SSR), which included a £1.983m balance of the provisional DSG allocation, representing a proportion of the additional HN funding announced in the Autumn Statement, and, if any new HN budget requirements arise in-year, over and above those planned from the HN budget outlined in the report, then separate in-year approvalwould be sought;

(d)  that the impact to schools’ budgets of the indicative allocation was set out in Table 5 of the report;

(2)  in respect of Mainstream Schools Additional Grant (MSAG), that additional funding for mainstream schools of £8.725m, announced in the Autumn Statement 2022, was being provided as a separate grant for 2023/24 outside of the schools national funding formula and would be allocated in accordance with the grant conditions (as detailed in paragraph 2.9.1 of the report);

(3)  in respect of Additional one-off DSG distribution to mainstream schools, that the budget presented in the report included the distribution of an additional £85 per pupil in one-off funding for mainstream schools in 2023/24, amounting to £3.710m, and that this approach required a Minimum Funding Guarantee disapplication request to the Secretary of State, which was approved on 10 January 2023 (as detailed in paragraph 2.6.1 of the report);

(4)  in respect of DSG block transfers, that this budget incorporated the £0.458m HN to CSS Block transfer, and a final figure of £1.907m for the HN to Schools Block transfer, both of which were approved at the Schools Forum meeting held on 06 December 2022;

(5)  in respect of Early Years:

(a)  that the total planned EY central expenditure aligned to the £1.025m approved at the Schools Forum meeting held on 06 December 2022;

(b)  that the previously separate Teachers’ Pay and Teachers’ Employers Pension Grants for school-based nurseries had been merged into 3 & 4-year-old funding, and the Local Authority was allocating this across all EY providers via the 3 & 4-year-old base rate (as outlined in paragraph 2.6.3 of the report);

(6)  in respect of Pupil Premium (PP), that the allocation of PP funding would be allocated to schools in accordance with the grant conditions.