21 January 2015 weekly update

Appointment of new Director Education Quality and Standards 

We have made a new appointment to the post of Director Education Quality and Standards, to replace Sue Rogers. This post oversees our services for school improvement, early years and post 16 skills and employability, governor services and adult and community learning. Gillian Cawley has been appointed and will start in Kent at the beginning of May. Gillian is currently Assistant Director for Education Services in Hertfordshire and I am delighted that she will be bringing her wide experience to support the next phase of our improvement work in Kent. 

School Budgets 2015-16 

The proposed budgets for all schools have now been run and submitted to the EFA. We aim to publish the budgets at the end of February following approval of the budget by County Council and clearance by the EFA that the budgets meet all their requirements.

The headlines from the proposed budgets are as follows: 

• We continue with a "flat cash" settlement for the fifth year and we are aware this is becoming an increasing challenge for all schools with the cumulative effect of pay and price increases. 
• A significant pressure in 2015-16 is the national change to the employers' superannuation rate for Teachers pensions which amounts to a £6m pressure across all Kent schools and academies. This is not funded in the DSG and to put that in context crudely equates to a £25 "hit" on the AWPU. 
• The DfE made an additional £390m of DSG available to the "least fairly funded" local authorities and we expected to see some of that benefit Kent schools and academies but the methodology adopted for the distribution meant that Kent saw none of this increase. We continue to lobby the DfE about this lack of fairness.
• The number of English as Additional Language pupils continues to increase, up by 849 pupils or 9.8% from last year. Part of this growth is linked to changes in the way pre-2008 academies are now treated by the EFA in our data.
• The number of pupils recorded as eligible for Free School Meals has reduced for the first time in many years (down by nearly 10%, or 1,847 pupils, from last year with 60% of this in the Primary sector). We suspect that part of this reduction is a result of the introduction of universal infant free school meals and we will be looking at the data in more detail once the budgets are complete. The bigger implication of this reduction for schools, in the longer term, is on the FSM Pupil Premium funding. Initially this will not be a significant issue as funding is distributed using the Ever 6 FSM data but if the reduction continues for the next few years then it will impact on schools FSM Pupil Premium funding.
• We have moved the £10m from the prior attainment factor in the formula into the High Needs top up funding budget for pupils in mainstream settings in line with the outcome of the consultation on High Needs Funding before Christmas. 

There was some £7m of headroom in the DSG available for schools. At the Schools' Funding Forum meeting on 28 November we discussed in principle a strategy for using any available DSG headroom, and agreed that we would use any headroom to meet the following items (in priority order):

• PFI affordability gap indexation (£300k)
• High Needs funding – any shortfall in our high needs settlement (which was published on 17 December)
• Any remaining headroom should be distributed to all providers (schools, academies, early years settings, alternative provision) on an equitable basis.

In accordance with the Forum decision the £7m was allocated as follows: £4m for High Needs of which £1.4m relates to the full year effect of growth in High Needs places in the current financial year, £1.2m relates to additional planned places in our Special Schools and Resourced Provision (in line with the SEND strategy) with the remaining £1.4m relating to additional planned places in FE colleges, Independent Special schools in Kent and out of county placements. 

The remaining £3m will be distributed to Primary, Secondary, and Special schools, PRUs and Alternative Provision and Early Years settings. The majority will go to Primary and Secondary schools and will help to cover some of the new pressures in 2015-16. 

Any schools facing financial difficulties or a potential deficit budget situation in the next 2-3 years are asked to contact us so that we can work with you to manage the situation. Please contact Keith.Abbott@kent.gov.uk.