Agenda and minutes

Apologies for absence received from Sarah Diggle, Andrew Fowler, Mustafaa Malik and Dominic Volpe.

The Forum is asked to approve as a correct record the minutes of the last meeting held on 14^th September 2023.

The minutes of the meeting held on the 14^th September 2023 were agreed as a correct record.

Terence Appleby, Resources and Digital

The Forum received a report on Quarter 2’s Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG) projected outturn position for 2023/24.

The Council’s budget for 2023/24 is £110.58m, with a projected outturn for the year of £110.997, an overspend of £0.417m. The overspend is due to:

·         +£907k top ups for maintained and academy schools

·         +£310k SEN support services

·         -£157k alternative provision

·         -£173k Support for Inclusion

·         -£360k Early Years Block as actual places are less than estimated

The reserve balance was £3.965m as of 31 March 2023 and factoring in the overspend of £0.417m and the Early Years clawback for 2022/23 of £0.182m this will reduce the balance to £3.366m at 31^st March 2024.

RESOLVED – The School Forum notes the report.

Carole Smith, Resources and Digital

A report was brought to the School Forum for the outcome of the Early Years consultation on the allocation of the Early Years Supplementary Grant (EYSG).

The Spring Budget 2023 announced additional funding for the existing early years entitlements for disadvantage for 2-year-old and 3 and 4-year-old children and the committee were presented with the provider responses in appendix 1 and further comments in appendix 2.

The Department for Education (DfE) announced they would provide additional supplementary funding to local authorities through a new EYSG. Following the previous meeting on the 14^th September 2023 the consultation was sent out on the 18^th August with a deadline date on the 22^nd September 2023.

The consultation proposed the following;

·         2-year-old EYSG be paid as a flat rate top up per house of £1.63 to all settings in receipt of 2-year-old funding.

·         3- & 4-year-old base rate top up of £0.1672.

·         ACORN/deprivation funding (weighted hour) £0.0003.

·         Quality 1 (weighted hour) £0.024.

·         Quality 2 £0.0106.

·         Maintained Nursery Grant (MNG) increase of £0.27 per hour.

24 Reponses were collated, and the Forum were provided with these responses in appendix 1 and 2, majority of the responses were positive and in support of the proposal.

The ETSG funding allocation of £578,164 has been received from the DfE.

RESOLVED – The School Forum notes the report.

Carole Smith, Resources and Digital

A report was presented to the School Forum to provide an update of the funding announcement in October 2023 by the Department of Education (DfE).

The initial 2024-25 national funding formula (NFF) allocations in  July 2023 found a technical error have been maid by the DfE officials during their initial calculations. The error was due to the incorrect procession of the pupil number calculations, which has resulted in the overall cost of the schools NFF was underestimated and the incorrect values were published in July 2023.The DfE update contains the new, corrected, factor values.   

There are no other changes to the structure of the NFF. The total amount of funding in the core schools budget will remain the same as initially announced in 2024-25.

The DfE have stated they intend to increase core funding by 2.4% however, this has now decreased to 1.9% and some areas have only had 1.4% increase.

Gateshead’s Allocations;

RESOLVES – The School Forum notes the report.

Thursday 7^th December 2023 at 2pm via Microsoft Teams

Thursday 7^th December 2023 at 2:00pm via Microsoft Teams.