Agenda item

At present the schools’ national fair funding formula has been deferred to 2019-20. There is no information yet from the Department of Education (DFE) other than that the Phase 2 consultation will be in the autumn.

The DFE conducted an exercise in the summer to rebase the 2017-18 Schools Block to match the spending patterns; however, the current position has not changed except for the centrally retained items, where the DFE has instructed Local Authorities that if the Local Authority does not have any ongoing commitment from 2012-13 or current contractual commitment on certain items, this funding needs to go back into the Schools Block.

The ESG will be moved into the Schools Block budget from 2017-18, this is for statutory duties that the council must provide. A breakdown of the service and costs will be available at the December Schools Forum.

The Authority Pro forma tool (APT) from the DFE is now available to the Local Authority to model the impact. Some modelling of the impact has been presented at a Task Group in October. Other Task Group meetings are scheduled in November and January.

Coral Miller stated that the National Fair Funding Conference has been cancelled a number of times this year and has now been scheduled for 13^th December 2016. Coral assumes that the final data and final APT form should be available around that date which will be slightly earlier than previous years. Coral expects the modelling of the impact using current information on the Schools Block budget to be completed for November 2016.