20 September 2017 weekly update

National Funding Formula for Schools, High Needs and Central School Services

On 14 September 2017, the Secretary of State for Education addressed Parliament on her reforms to introduce a fairer school funding system. Over 26,000 responses were received to the stage 2 consultation, which took place in March 2017, and this address was the government’s final response to that consultation. The headlines from the announcement are as follows:

The overall amount of funding in core school budgets is increasing by £2.6bn by 2019-20. This increase is helping to fund the rising pupil population as well as providing a small increase for all schools, ensuring no school loses funding from the implementation of the National Funding Formula (NFF).

The NFF is “soft” for 2018-19 and 2019-20, which means the new NFF funding rates (see appendix 1 (PDF, 154.5 KB)) are applied to all schools and then the individual budgets are aggregated to Local Authority (LA) level to arrive at a new School Block allocation for 2018-19. Local authorities will then decide, through the operation of their local funding formula and in consultation with schools and their Funding Forum, how much each school will receive.

However the DfE has published, alongside the guidance documentation, a school level illustration. This is likely to raise school expectations around the level of funding you will receive in 2018-19.

The DfE has provided an illustration of the impact on applying the new NFF funding rates (appendix 1 (PDF, 154.5 KB)) against the 2017-18 school budget data, and then applying the minimum and maximum percentages mentioned below. This results in Kent’s Schools Block allocation increasing by £27.7m (3.3%) in 2018-19. This is significantly higher than the stage 2 consultation illustration. In 2019-20 the Schools Block is set to increase by a further £22m. However, both of these increases are before taking into consideration growth in overall pupil numbers.

The government had previously published a commitment that Secondary school funding would be set at a minimum of £4,800 per pupil by 2019-20. This announcement now confirms the similar rate for Primary schools is £3,500. In 2018-19, as a step towards these figures, these rates are £3,300 for Primary and £4,600 for Secondary. It is important to note that this does not necessarily mean that each school will receive this funding, as although it will be within Kent’s Schools Block DSG allocation, it will depend on how this works through the Local Formula.

Schools that are gaining have been capped at +3% per annum, and all school allocations have been increased by a minimum of 0.5% in 2018-19. This means that it may take some schools a number of years before they receive the new NFF rates shown in appendix 1 (PDF, 154.5 KB).

The NFF rates for additional educational need are unchanged from the stage 2 consultation. The additional funding mentioned above has enabled modest increases to the basic per pupil funding.

The schools block allocation continues to be ring-fenced from 2018-19, however local authorities will be able to move up to 0.5% (c. £4.3m) of the schools block across to the High Needs block. This transfer will require Funding Forum approval.

The DfE have confirmed that the PFI affordability gap factor will increase annually in line with inflation (RPIX) - which is helpful for Kent.

Local authorities will have a new flexibility by being able to set the rate of MFG for its schools between 0% and -1.5% per pupil.

The High Needs National Funding Formula is being increased by 0.5% per head in 2018-19 and by 1% per head in 2019-20.

The Central School Services block is reducing by £171k in 2018-19, and then reducing by a further £197k in 2019-20 (£368k in total over two years). This funding pays for statutory services within Education and there will be implications if alternative funding or efficiencies cannot be made.

The Pupil Premium rate for Looked After Children, known as Pupil Premium Plus, has increased from £1,900 to £2,300 from 2018-19. In Kent this is managed through the Virtual School Kent.

In summary, the increases to the basic per pupil funding rates and the resulting increases to the schools block are welcome. However we remain concerned that the demand for High Needs funding significantly exceeds the increase to the High Needs funding block, and this is compounded by the ring-fencing of the schools block. This is becoming unsustainable and unmanageable.

We will provide a further update when more detail becomes known.

Appointment of Principal Primary and Secondary School Improvement Advisers

Anton Francic, Head of School Improvement, left KCC at the end of August to take up a post in another local authority. I would like to thank Anton for all his good work in Kent and wish him well in his new role.

We are not replacing the post of Head of School Improvement. Instead we are building on the current arrangements for the Primary team and have appointed Linda Pickles as the Principal Adviser for Primary School Improvement.

We are changing our arrangements for Secondary, and combining our management of the work for PRUs and Special schools as part of the new role. Celia Buxton has been appointed as the Principal Adviser for Secondary, PRUs and Special schools. Celia has been the Executive Headteacher of the Education Health Needs Service and our County Lead Officer for PRUs. As part of her new role she will work with the Skills and Employability Team to develop a more integrated approach to the way we work with schools to support improvements for 11-19 year olds.

Linda and Celia will work closely with the Kent Association of Headteachers, the Kent Association of Special Schools and the PRU Board to ensure we coordinate all our efforts and resources for school improvement.

Patrick Leeson
Corporate Director 
Children, Young People and Education