Agenda item

(To receive a report by Elizabeth Bowes, Strategic Finance Manager, Schools Finance Team, which informs the Schools' Forum on the school funding arrangements for 2023/24)

Consideration was given to a report by the Strategic Finance Lead – Children’s Services, which invited the Forum to consider the School Funding Arrangements for 2023/24 and agreement was sought by the Forum to the Local Authority’s (LAs) proposals to a number of centrally held budgets.

A supplementary report had been circulated to the members of the Forum prior to the meeting, which provided a mainstream schools update paper on adopting the National Funding Formula for 2023/24 and the measures to address the affordability gap.

The Forum was advised of the background to the national funding formula; the Government’s funding intentions for 2023/24, announced on 20 July 2022 and then subsequently updated on 16 December 2022. It was noted that the 2023/24 school funding levels were set to rise by £1.5bn to £55.3bn or a 1.9% increase in per pupil funding. The Autumn 2022 statement announced a further £2bn increase in funding in each of 2023/24 and 2024/25 to respond to increasing costs faced by schools, particularly through staff pay awards and utilities. For Lincolnshire mainstream schools, this new grant equates to an additional 3.4% increase in per pupil funding.

The Strategic Financial Lead also outlined the details of other school funding announcements that included: 2023/24 Dedicated School Grant (DSG) allocations, the pupil premium announcements, universal infant free school meals, the Mainstream School Additional Grant (MSAG), other funding blocks such as the Central Schools Services block, High Needs block and Early Years block, and the financial outlook for the Council.

The fundamentals principles of the Government’s NFF were not changing for 2023/24. The key NFF updates for 2023/24 were shown on page 22 of the report.   It was noted that for the DSG School Budget for 2023/24, the LA was to continue adopting the NFF in 2023/24, subject to affordability. The October 2022 schools census which was used for 2023/24 mainstream schools budgets had continued to see significant growth in both Free School Meals (FSMs) and FSMs Ever 6 with the cost of living challenges being a contributing factor to this.

The supplementary paper explained the overall affordability gap shortfall was £2.656m to adopt the NFF in full including a 0.5% minimum funding guarantee (MFG). The LA was unable to set an affordable formula, the LA would therefore continue to adopt the same principles for 2023/24 when addressing affordability issues of the Schools block. The following steps were applied: to reduce the growth element of Schools block budget by £1.934m; a budget transfer of £0.495m from available funds within the Central Schools Services block, which required Schools’ Forum support, and the remaining £0.227m shortfall was to be addressed through a downward adjustment of 0.075% of the Key Stage Age Weighted Pupil Unit (AWPU) values from the Government’s NFF rates in 2023/24. Appendix A also provided a funding comparison of the NFF factors for 2022/23 to 2023/24.

It was reported that the LA had conducted its annual review of the DSG central budgets, and areas of refinements were focused on the demand-led budgets within the High Needs block.  It was noted further that the affordability for all the blocks of the DSG would be finalised over the coming weeks.

Table 2: Budgets requiring Schools Forum decisions – Schools Block; Table 3: Budgets requiring Schools Forum decisions – CSSB ongoing commitments; and Table 4: Budgets requiring Schools’ Forum decisions – CSSB historic commitments were detailed on pages 24 to 28 of the report. The Forum considered the three tables presented.

The Forum were asked to consider and comment on the main report and supporting paper relating to the NFF and to support the approaches to addressing the affordability gap to adopt the NFF, and to support the Central Schools Services block transfer of £0.495m to the Schools block. The Forum were also asked to approve the budgets as detailed in Tables 2 to 4 of the report, accordance with DfE regulations.

The following comment was raised:

·      The Forum was advised that two other options had been considered for addressing the affordability gap in the NFF, which were to reduce the MFG to 0% from +0.5%, however this would have realised minimal savings, and the introduction of a ceiling cap for schools who had seen an increase in funding, but this would have impacted those schools seeing an increase in pupil deprivation levels.

RESOLVED:

1.      That the report be noted;

2.      That the proposals relating to several centrally held budgets, as below       and  as               referenced in in the report, be agreed.

a.      Support the LAs proposals relating to the measures to address affordability of mainstream schools NFF:support the Central Schools Services block transfer of £0.495m to the Schools block, and

b.      support the approaches to addressing the remaining affordability gap through the Schools Growth funding, and the AWPU funding being -0.075% below the Government NFF values when adopting the NFF for 2023/24.