Agenda item

Forum members to note the contents of the report based on the “Schools revenue funding 2022/23 - Operational guide” and “The High Needs Funding 2022/23 operational Guide.

Schools Forum received a report which provided the Forum with an overview on the “Schools Revenue Funding – Operational guidance” and “The and high needs funding 2022/23 policy document” which allowed for the planning of the local schools funding formula for that year.

The Department for Education (DfE) had acknowledged the essential role that local authorities had played to support education as the Country had dealt with the COVID-19 pandemic. The DfE stated that they had made limited changes to the funding arrangements in order to ensure that funding was delivered as smoothly as possible to schools.

The DfE had also published the provisional National Funding Formula (NFF) allocations at local authority level for the schools, high needs and central schools services funding blocks for 2022/23. The DfE would use the NFF to calculate the blocks within the dedicated schools grant (DSG), which would be issued to authorities in December 2021.

Table 1: National Funding Formula – Summary

The DfE intended to publish the early years national funding formula (EYNFF) operational guide for 2022/23 in the autumn and provisional allocations would be issued to authorities in December 2021.

The key changes to the schools NFF in 2021/22 were: -

NFF factor values had increased by:

• £10,000 to the maximum sparsity values.

• 3% to basic entitlement, free school meals at any time in the last 6 years (FSM6), income deprivation affecting children index (IDACI), lower prior attainment (LPA), English as an additional language (EAL) and the lump sum.

• 2% to the floor, the minimum per pupil levels and free school meals (FSM).

• 0% on the premises factors, except for PFI which had increased by RPIX.

Data on pupils who were eligible for FSM6 was now taken from the October 2020 school census instead of the January 2020 census, to make the factor more up to date and bring it in line with arrangements for other NFF factors as well as the pupil premium.

• In calculating low prior attainment proportions, data from the 2019 early years foundation stage profile (EYFSP) and key stage 2 (KS2) tests had been used as a proxy for the 2020 tests, following the cancellation of assessment due to coronavirus (COVID-19).

• Pupils who had joined a school between January 2020 and May 2020 attracted funding for mobility based on their entry date, rather than the May school census. (The May 2020 census had not taken place due to coronavirus (COVID-19)).

• Further to the consultation on changes to the payment process of schools’ business rates, schools’ business rates would be paid by ESFA to billing authorities directly on behalf of all state funded schools from 2022/2023 onwards.

• The department had confirmed the following aspects of the high needs NFF:

• the funding floor was set at 8% so each local authority would see an increase of at least 8% per head of their 2 to 18 population (as estimated by the Office of National Statistics).

• the gains cap was set at 11%, allowing local authorities to see gains up to this percentage increase under the formula, again calculated on a per head basis of their 2 to 18 population.

Following the consultation on changing the dedicated schools grant, the following requirements had been removed as they no longer required schools forum approval:

• any deficit from the previous funding period that was being brought forward and was to be funded from the new financial year’s schools budget.

• any brought forward deficit on de-delegated services which was to be met by the overall schools budget.

• In 2022/2023, as in previous years, each local authority would continue to set a local schools funding formula, in consultation with local schools. In July 2021, the department had published a consultation on proposals for completing reforms of the funding system, whereby individual schools budgets would be set directly through one single national formula, rather than local funding formulae. This consultation proposes that, from 2023/ 2024, local authorities would be required to bring their own formulae closer to the schools NFF, to smooth the transition. These requirements did not apply in 2022/2023, but local authorities may choose to move their local formulae closer to the NFF in advance of these requirements.

Key features of local authority formulae arrangements in 2022/ 2023 were: -

• TPG and TPECG were now fully rolled in to the NFF; no separate adjustments were needed in the local formulae, beyond what was already done in 2021/2022, to account for these grants in 2022/2023.

• The MPPLs would remain mandatory, at the new NFF values.

• Local authorities had the freedom to set the MFG in local formulae between +0.5% and +2% per pupil

• DSG Transfers - Local authorities continued to be able to transfer up to 0.5% of their schools block to other blocks of the DSG, with schools forum approval.

• A disapplication was required for transfers above 0.5%, or any amount without schools forum approval; this applied to any transfers even if the minister had agreed an amount in previous years.

• Following the cancellation of assessments in summer 2020 due to coronavirus (COVID-19), local authorities would use 2019

assessment data as a proxy in the low prior attainment factor in local funding formulae for the 2020 reception and year 6 cohort.

Rates

• This was an optional factor which had been used by all local authorities. Rates would be paid by the ESFA directly to billing authorities on behalf of all maintained schools and academies from 2022 to 2023 onwards. Local authorities no longer needed to fund rates at their estimate of the actual cost and would no longer be required to allocate rates payments to schools. This was new for 2022/2023 (and a change from previous years).

• Therefore, local authorities were also no longer required to adjust rates with additional allocations to schools during the financial year (outside of the funding formula).

The report went on to provide further detail on the particulars regarding the following aspects: -

• School Improvement;

• DSG Deficit Management;

• Central School Services Block (CSSB);

• Grants for 2022/23;

• High Needs Funding

A member of the Forum queried whether the requirements of section 3.22 of the report would impact upon recruitment for academies. R Kerr clarified that that section of the report was purely in relation to teachers’ pay and pensions, not recruitment.

Schools Forum noted the contents of the report, which was based on the “Schools revenue funding 2022/23 - Operational guide” and “The High Needs Funding 2022/23 operational Guide”.