Children, Families, Learning & Leisure Cabinet Member – Minutes – 13 February 2019
25 (25) SCHOOL FUNDING FORMULA 2019-20 – The Directors: Governance and Partnerships and Learning, Skills and Culture submitted a joint report updating the Cabinet Member with regard to the 2019-20 funding allocations for the Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG) and the amount available for individual school budgets, and seeking approval to implement the local funding formula for 2019/20, which took a further step towards the National Funding Formula.
The Education and Skills Funding Agency’s (ESFA) published an operational guide annually outlining the arrangements to help councils and their schools forums plan the local implementation, calculation and allocation of school funding formulas for the forthcoming financial year.
On 17 December 2018 the ESFA published the 2019-20 Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG) Allocations. This was based on October 2018 School Census data. The allocation for North Lincolnshire was £132.661m, an increase of £3.202m from last year. This included elements for schools, high needs, early years and central budgets.
The element of DSG which was available for the Schools Budget for all mainstream school funding was £106.331m, an increase of £2.968m from last year. The Operational guide set out how individual school budget (ISB) shares could be calculated.
There were a number of factors which benefited North Lincolnshire schools in 2019/20:
• An increase of 2.9% in cash terms in the schools budget
• No top slice of 0.5% (£530k) to support high needs in 2019/20
• The Minimum funding guarantee set at the highest permissible level of 0.5%
• Adopting the minimum funding levels of £4,800 per secondary pupil and £3,500 per primary pupil
• Addressing the rurality issues through the sparsity indicator for small schools
Nationally there had been considerable movement in local formulae towards the national funding formula and in order to continue to support the smooth transition towards the national formula the DFE had confirmed that councils would continue to determine local formulae for at least another year.
The report set out the final proposals for the North Lincolnshire schools funding formula 2019-20.
Resolved – (a) That the formula factor values outlined in Option 1 at paragraph 3.1 of the report, moving towards the National Funding Formula and thus maintaining the pace of change, be approved, and (b) that the factors outlined under Option 1 in Appendix 1 be used to calculate the individual schools budget shares for mainstream schools with North Lincolnshire for 2019/20.