Agenda item

To receive and consider the High Needs Block update report.

Patricia Davies stated that the High Needs Block paper which was set out in agenda pages 37-48 had already been presented to Executive and CLT, and it also formed the basis of a presentation to the DfE. 

During the discussion of the item the following comments were made:

·           Ginny Rhodes questioned the ‘academies top slice 7%’ which showed in the pie chart on page 39 of the agenda.  Coral Miller explained that this meant that place funding was given directly to academies.  Paul Miller suggested that the terminology could be changed to ‘passport’ to make it more accurate;

·           John Bayes was interested to know more about the Out of Borough Placements, in particular in relation to maintained special schools.  Lynne Samuel explained that the Out of Borough Placements, including independent and maintained schools had been grouped together for presentation purposes, but could be broken down;

·           Ginny Rhodes noted that there was no data on page 41 for Social, Emotional and Mental Health (SEMH) at secondary schools.  Patricia Davies agreed to investigate the reason for this;

·           Janet Perry asked about the disparity in the proportion of pupils with SEN in Wokingham, the South East and the national statistics.  Patricia Davies stated that there were a number of reasons for this, such as the fact that a lot of Wokingham parents applied for Education Health and Care Plans (EHCP), there were a lot of new families moving into the area and there was a national increasing trend;

·           Jay Blundell stated that a lot of children with Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and SEMH did not stay in mainstream secondary schools and that may be the reason why this was not accounted for in the chart in the secondary schools line; primary schools were usually able to accommodate children with ASD and SEMH;

·           Ginny Rhodes asked for more information about the clawback which was mentioned on page 42.  Coral Miller explained that in 2016/17 when setting the budget for 2017/18, £700k was moved from the HNB to the Schools Block to distribute more money to the schools.  It was believed that this was the wrong way round given the pressures in HNB and she had spoken to DfE about it.  She explained that this affected the setting of the 2019/20 budget as Local Authorities would no longer be able to move money from one block to the other as they used to;

·           Jay Blundell explored the idea that given that the Schools Block would not carry forward deficit in the same way that the HNB would, maybe there was a case to be made to give back the money to the HNB;

·           Paul Miller reminded the Forum that a decision had been made by Schools Forum not to give 0.5% of its budget to the HNB.  Had the Schools Forum decided to give the 0.5% to the HNB, the Schools Block would have helped HNB and would have been able to write off any in year deficit;

·           Patricia Davies stated that the DfE had been sympathetic to the difficulties faced by Wokingham’s HNB.  Patricia noted that Wokingham was not the worse Local Authority in terms of HNB overspend;

·           Patricia Davies stated that there were some Local Authorities that were able to manage their HNB budgets, the DfE would be looking to see how they were managing and share good practice with other Local Authorities;

·           Members pointed out that schools had probably already spent the money allocated to them in 2016/17 and stated that this should not be re-visited;

·           John Bayes asked if this diversion from the Schools Block had happened only once or whether this was repeated in other years.   Paul Miller explained that the DfE had used the HNB allocation of 2016/17 to base the future HNB allocation.  However Officers were now arguing that this ‘baselining’ was erroneous because the 2016/17 budget was in fact short of £700k in that year; 

·           John Bayes asked for more clarification in relation to the Out of Borough maintained special school allocation in the pie chart and which line this related to in the revenue monitoring spreadsheet.  Coral Miller explained that there was not a separate line, this was within the special schools line;

·           In response to a question Coral Miller stated, after checking the Schools Outturn report, that this was within line 1.2.1 – provision for pupils with SEN;

·           Paul Miller was pleased to see that there was a clear action plan;

·           In response to a question raised in the previous meeting, Patricia Davies stated that there were seven children with EHCP’s moving into secondary schools who would be funded from the HNB;

·           Kerry Clifford asked if there was any funding available for Ambleside Centre given that it had been marked as a resource space.  Patricia Davies stated that funding was linked to EHCPs only.

RESOLVED That the report be noted.