Agenda and minutes

Apologies for absence were received from Nick Cooper, Angela Turner and Jayne Jardine.

The Forum was advised that outstanding member vacancies would be addressed in the next round of Schools Forum elections.

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To approve the minutes of the previous meeting held on 3rd November 2022 as a correct record.

It was RESOLVED to approve the minutes of the previous meeting held on 3 November 2022 as a correct record.

To consider any actions arising from previous meetings.

Action Point 82: The Committee required further clarification to be sought on the issue of Brent teaching staff being paid an inner London salary despite Brent being funded at an outer London scale. Officers advised that this had been a historical decision to attract teaching staff into the borough, however acknowledged the financial challenges this raised for schools in the current economic climate. Officers agreed to raise the disparity in funding with the DfE and update the Schools Forum when a response had been received.

This report sets out the proposed DSG Schools Budget for 2023/24 for consultation and agreement by Schools Forum ahead of the Council budget being set and approved by full Council in February 2023.

Olufunke Adediran, Head of Finance at Brent Council, introduced the report that set out the proposed Schools Budget for 2023/24 for consultation and agreement from the Schools Forum ahead of the Council budget being approved by full Council in February 2023. The following key points were brought to the Forum’s attention:

·       The Forum was advised that the report focused primarily on the Schools Block, as a separate report had been provided for the Early Years Block, with the High Needs Block due to be a focal point at the February 2023 Schools Forum.

·       The Forum heard that following the announcement in the 2022 Autumn Statement that the core schools’ budget would increase by £2.3bn over the next two financial years, it materialised that the actual allocation would be £2bn as the announcement had included £0.3bn for the Health and Social Care Levy which had since been abolished.

·       In the 2023/24 financial year mainstream schools would be allocated additional funding through the mainstream schools’ additional grant (MSAG), this would be in addition to schools’ allocations made through the schools National Funding Formula (NFF). The MSAG additional funding was only applicable to state funded mainstream schools.

·       Brent was estimated to receive £8.5m of funding in total for primary and secondary maintained schools and academies, free schools and city technology colleges. The school level allocations of the MSAG for 2023/24 financial year would be published in May 2023.

·       The additional funding received in 2022/23 through the schools’ supplementary grant (SSG) to reflect the costs of the Health and Social Care levy and other costs pressures had been rolled up into the 2023/34 National Funding Formula (NFF) for the 5 to 16 year old element of the grant.

·       Pupil premium funding had increased by 5% for 2023/24 to £1,385 for Primary aged pupils, £985 for Secondary aged pupils and £2,410 for LAC pupils and care leavers.

·       The Forum was directed to Table 1 in Section 4.3 of the report that laid out the break down of the DSG Funding Allocations per block that illustrated an increase in all blocks with the exception of the Central Block which would see a small decrease as a result of planned annual reductions against historic pension costs of centrally employed teachers.

·       Although the increased funding to the High Needs Block (HNB) was welcomed by the Forum, it was also recognised that the increased funding would be insufficient to cover the cost pressures incurred from the rising EHCP costs and deficit, as such a request was made to Schools Forum to request 0.5% transfer from the Schools Block as per the report recommendations.

·       The Forum was advised that the de-delegations for maintained schools to agree remained mainly in line with the previously agreed de-delegated items as shown in Table 3, Section 6.2 of the report. Minor adaptions included increasing the pot of funding to support schools that were financially struggling to fund redundancies to £200k.

·       Following the DfE consultation on changes to the way that the School Improvement  ...  view the full minutes text for item 6.

Following the confirmation of the provisional DSG Early Years’ (EY) Block funding for Brent, this report seeks Schools Forum approval of the local EY Funding Formula for 2023/24.

Folake Olufeko, Senior Finance Analyst at Brent Council introduced the report which outlined the provisional Early Years Block DSG funding allocation for Brent as supported by the Early Years Funding subgroup.

 In presenting the report key points highlighted included:

·             The government had announced a national £180m increase for 2023/24 with a further £20m announced to support Early Years providers with the additional National Living Wage costs associated with delivering the free childcare entitlements.

·             As a result of the national increase in funding, the Forum were advised that Brent would see a £1.3m increase compared to 2022/23, equating to a total fund of £24.5m. Additionally there had been an increase to 2, 3 and 4 year old funding rates as illustrated in Table 1, Section 3.7 of the report.

·             The Forum noted that the funding had been based on the figures from the January 2022 census and would be updated later in the year to reflect updated census figures.

·             The Forum were advised that following Government consultation the DfE had taken the decision to mainstream the teachers’ pay and pensions grant (TPPG) into the 2023/24 EYNFF. Subsequent concerns were raised from some local authorities that schools based nurseries would no longer receive the TPPG as a separate grant. In response to the concerns raised through the consultation, the government had increased the total planned value of funding supplements to no more than 12% of the total value of planned formula funding to providers, (the quality supplement) compared to 10% in 2022/23. This would allow local authorities the flexibility to use the additional 2% to fund pressures that some provides faced from addressing the need to pay contributions to the teachers’ pension scheme.

·             The Early Years Funding Sub group was consulted on the proposed methodology and agreed that the supplement should apply to Brent school based nurseries and PVI’s where they had qualified staff, maintained nurseries would be excluded from the equality supplement to avoid double funding as the maintained nursery supplement funding had been revised to an hourly funding rate that was inclusive of the teacher’s pay and pensions grant.

·             For 2023/24 the EYNFF rate for 2 year old funding would see an increase from £6.29 per hour to £6.84 per hour, it was proposed that 100% of the funding would be passed on to providers. This was possible due to the increased funding for 3 & 4 year olds which had resulted in increased allocations of 5% being retained for central expenditure.

·             The Forum noted that the Early Years Funding Sub Group had expressed gratitude for the increased funding, however were clear that funding remained far below the levels needed to effectively meet the needs of the service, particularly in light of the ongoing issues with recruitment, retention and increased numbers of children presenting with Special Educational Needs.

·             It was noted that although Maintained Nursery Schools (MNS) in Brent would continue to receive supplementary funding that would see a 6% increase this financial year, due to the TPPG now being  ...  view the full minutes text for item 7.

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