Agenda item

Coral Miller reported the results of the recent consultation with schools and the proposals discussed by the Task and Finish group.

She reported that seven schools had responded. Maggie Waller said that receiving only seven responses was disappointing. Coral stated that six of these had agreed with the introduction of a ‘reception uplift’ which would mean additional funding for just 14 schools The Task and Finish group had also supported this and Schools Forum agreed to the introduction of a ‘reception uplift’ in 2015/16.

Coral Miller reported that six of the seven responses had supported the introduction of capping. John Constable referred to the Task and Finish group discussions based on modelling and reported that 3% had been the consensus of the Task and Finish group. Schools Forum agreed to the introduction of capping at 3% in 2015/16.

Schools Forum agreed that the existing formula factors should remain for 2015/16.

There was some discussion about the primary: secondary ratio. Nicky Willis raised this and asked if there was a way this could be looked at again in a simple way. It was noted that when reviewing the value of the individual factors any resulting impact on the ratio would be seen since it is the impact of the values of each factor that lead to the ratio which is not set separately.  It was also noted that the introduction of a national funding formula could cut across any local considerations.

Coral Miller agreed to provide benchmarking data as she had been working on this in another LA. It was noted by several members that any benchmarking data needed to be from statistical neighbours but also that it was important to look at relevant LAs to take account of issues around selection as this has such a big impact in Slough.

Jo Rockall suggested that data expressed in percentage terms would be more useful than raw figures.