To seek the views of the forum on local and national school funding issues, including the recommendations of the budget working group (BWG) on the following matters:

·        Herefordshire schools budget 2020/21 including schools consultation paper

·        Update from Department for Education (DfE) briefing on 11th December 2019

·        High needs budget 2020/21

The SFM introduced the report and highlighted the key points:

·         National announcements on school funding had introduced a minimum funding level of £3,750 per primary and £5,000 per secondary pupil for 2020/21;

·         In total Herefordshire would see approximately a 3.8% increase per pupil but this would not be shared equally across all schools, those schools considerably lower than the minimum funding values would see a significant increase;

·         This increase would not make up the ground lost since 2010 but was encouraging news;

·         The draft consultation paper set out a proposal to pass through the funding increases from the government and implement in full the national funding formula, including the new mobility factor;

·         The new mobility factor had more appropriate thresholds and would better reflect the situation in Herefordshire;

·         Herefordshire had received a £0.3m share of the national growth fund in 2019/20, a similar sum was expected for 2020/21 but would not be confirmed until December;

·         The consultation paper set out proposals to share the growth funding between supporting future growth, a slight increase to per pupil values for mainstream schools and supporting and extending the SEN protection scheme;

·         The indicative Herefordshire share of the additional funding for high needs was £2m, this was a little more than had been expected and left only a small funding gap of £0.2m to be addressed for 2020/21 based on the projected budget;

·         The forum would be asked for recommendations in January 2020 as to how to fund this gap, this could include a modest transfer from the schools block subject to the forum’s consent;

·         The projected outturn for 2019/20 was an overspend of £1m, this had been taken into account in the proposed budget for 2020/21 along with potential growth in complex needs places of £0.5m;

·         The proposals for the high needs budget included increases to tariff funding to replicate the inflationary increase for mainstream schools in the special schools, changes to the tariffs to better reflect medical factors and an investment in initiatives designed to reduce future demand;

·         A proposal to extend the SEN protection scheme to include secondary schools was also included in the consultation.

The SFM commented that Herefordshire had done well to avoid going into deficit on its dedicated schools grant and that many other councils were struggling with significant funding gaps. The projected overspend for 2019/20 would reduce reserves to £0.7m so it was important to continue to scrutinise budgets to ensure Herefordshire did not go into deficit.

It was noted that concerns had previously been expressed regarding repeated transfers from the schools block but the importance of the SEN protection scheme was also recognised. The scheme was intended to meet additional costs of schools that had admitted a higher than average number of SEN pupils. It was requested that additional details be included in the consultation paper on the proposals to extend the scheme to include secondary schools.

The SFM reported on a briefing held by the Department for Education at which it was confirmed that there  ...  view the full minutes text for item 46