Agenda item

Michael Jarrett informed the meeting that the Early Years Task Group had met on 16 January.  Forum noted the Task Group’s recommendations regarding the implementation of EYNFF for 2018-19. The Group favoured the third proposed option with the Universal Base Rate of £5.20 with inflation uplift of 2.8%, bringing the rate to £5.35 an hour.  The model had been tested for sustainability and all providers would see an increase.  The deprivation supplementary allowance would be increased to £0.75 per hour. The centrally retained element of the Early Years Block would be 5%, a reduction from 7%.  Current calculations indicated a surplus for contingency.  Nationally there had been a low take up of the 30 hour provision and there was a need to build contingency in order to mitigate that.  It was noted that the allocation from the DfE to SBC was £15.3M.

A marketing campaign was to be arranged across Slough promoting 2-year old places, in order to generate interest.

Across the five maintained nurseries the DfE supplementary funding allocation of £1.1M had been reduced to £840,000.  Michael Jarrett explained he had met with Headteachers, who had all agreed this should be paid as a lump sum.

There had been positive feedback from the Task Group at their meeting held the day before this meeting and the slides of that meeting would be circulated to all Schools Forum members.

It was pointed out that deprivation funding, currently based on FSM, would need to be considered in the future, possibly modelling the use of IDACI. This would be a piece of work to be carried out during the next academic year.

An updated report would be provided at the next Schools Forum meeting.