Agenda item

David Gearing

The 2019-20 Dedicated Schools Grant settlement

Details of the 2019-20 Dedicated Schools Grant settlement for Kirklees and how it compares to the previous funding year were presented to the meeting.

a)         Schools Block

The Schools funding block has increased from £287.3m in 2018-19 to £293.5m for 2019-20, a rise of around £6.2m. This increase is a combination of an overall rise in the number of pupils being educated in Kirklees and the effect of a second 0.5% minimum increase in per pupil funding. [This second 0.5% per pupil increase is actually expressed as a 1% rise on 2017-18 individual school per pupil baselines].

b)        Growth provision in the Schools Block

The new formula-based method for including an element of funding for future pupil growth within the settlement has provided more growth funding to Kirklees than before – an increase from £1.07m in 2018-19 to £1.76m in 2019-20. The majority of these funds, it is proposed, will be committed to the continued operation of a Pupil Growth Fund (£600k) and to include estimates within the funding submission of the next new year group intake at September 2019 for those new school provisions which are still adding a year group from the start of each academic year. It is also proposed that the new element of growth funding (£698,500) is retained centrally.

c)         Central Schools Services Block

Kirklees’ CSSB allocation has fallen slightly in comparison to last year – from £2.34m in 2018-19 to £2.30m in 2019-20. This is in line with the transitional path to Kirklees’ eventual national funding formula outcome for the CSSB, although the drop has been mitigated slightly by an overall rise in pupil numbers. The allocation still includes a separate sum of £170,400 in respect of historic ongoing teacher pension costs taken on by the DSG.

d)        Early Years Block 

Kirklees’ Early Years Block funding has fallen from £28.70m in 2018-19 to £28.09m for 2019-20. There has been a fall between years in the numbers of 3 and 4 year old children accessing the universal 15 hours of free nursery entitlement and also in the numbers of disadvantaged two year olds accessing the same entitlement, with a knock-on effect on the amount of early years pupil premium received. On the plus side, the number of children accessing the extended offer to 30 hours per week has increased and there have been modest increases too to the Early Years Disability Access funding and to the maintained nursery school supplement figure (in respect of Flatts Nursery School).

e)         High Needs Block

The starting position for the High Needs Block allocation to Kirklees has increased to £36.99m for 2019-20 from £34.78m in 2018-19. The NFF outcome for Kirklees’ High Needs Block promised to deliver an annual increase of around £1m each year starting from 2017-18 onwards for a period of seven years. However, the Secretary of State for Education recently announced additional high needs funding for both 2018-19 and 2019-20. In each of these years Kirklees will receive an additional £1.04m. So our High Needs funding has actually increased by £2.21m compared to the original 2018-19 allocation – comprised of the original £1m increase, the new £1.04m released by the Secretary of State and a volume-related rise of around £0.17m. The additional funding will obviously help to mitigate some pressure within the High Needs account but, for context, this means that the 2018-19 overspend is initially likely to be £7m rather than £8m!

The shape of (mainstream) School funding for 2019-20

An analysis comparing the 2019-20 schools funding allocation with the previous year’s figures was circulated to the meeting. At a previous Forum meeting there had been some discussion about how to complete the final stages of the calculations, particularly around the setting of a value for the lump sum given the temporary addition of £13,282 to the NFF lump sum value in the 2018-19 distribution. Subsequent work on the APT revealed that the 1% cash floor protection factor did not get near to using all the remaining unallocated funds – around £1.8m was still uncommitted. The Minimum Funding Guarantee mechanism could not provide a solution to allocating this sum so, once again, an additional amount has had to be added in 2019-20 to the NFF lump sum value of £110,000. At £10,814 per school the addition does at least represent a modest move in the direction of the NFF compared to the year before.

Due to the inclusion in the settlement of funding to deliver a second 0.5% minimum per pupil increase on 2017-18 individual school baselines, the total funding allocated to local schools has moved further away from the pure NFF outcome in 2019-20. Cash protection in the allocation in 2018-19 stood at £11.8m in total and this rises to £14.5m for 2019-20.