Agenda item

Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG) - Growth Provision for 5 Year Planning

To receive and consider a report giving details of the requirements for growth provision within the DSG.

Minutes:

The Forum received and considered a report, set out on Agenda pages 25 to 35, giving details of the requirements for growth provision within the DSG.

 

Officers explained that they had tried to model the impact of funding the provision of new schools and that it was based on current assumptions.  The report included graphs showing predicted pupil numbers up to 2022, and the cost/funding profiles for new primary and secondary schools.

 

John Wood, Children’s Services Programme Manager, said that the assumption for the new secondary school was for a 6 form entry, with an admission number of 180; although the funding on pupil numbers does not need to be agreed until January 2016.  Benchmarking and modelling of the funding required were carried out for inclusion when the proposal was advertised.  Proposers included details in their bid, and following selection, the amounts will be negotiated.  This will start in September 2015.

 

Some of the discussion around the 5 Year Plan item in Minute number 56, was centred on growth, however additional comments were made as follows:

·           It is the Council’s responsibility to provide a sufficiency of places.

·           Do we need to have 180 in the secondary, could it not be 90.

·           Is there going to be a limit to the growth fund?

·           It needs to be recognised that it is in funding the new schools and growth that is putting the schools budget into deficit.

·           Schools in deficit will have difficulty in maintaining the high standards expected; by the local authority and parents.

·           The accounting for the new schools should be separate.

·           It is expected that the level of growth in the budget will not necessarily reduce for a number of years, until the growth in pupil numbers levels off.

·           Schools are not happy at being expected to take a reduced budget to fund this growth.

·           Is there an option the expanding provision by developing free schools; this is a better option as most of the funding comes from the Government.

·           It is the Council’s responsibility to assess the impact across the whole organisation, and balance the impact of having to bus pupils to schools against the cost to the DSG.  However the savings made would not be given back to the DSG.

·           Why are the provider’s projects costs included in the funding taken from the DSG? 

 

It was reported that the Children’s Services Overview and Scrutiny Committee had been asked to look at the process around setting school budgets and the funding allocation.

 

RESOLVED: the following:

1)   that the concerns of the Schools Forum members that reducing school’s budgets to fund new schools is likely to lead to a drop in standards, be acknowledged;

 

2)  that the Schools Forum may not be willing to approve a budget for 2016/17 which includes a £1.2m cut to the AWPU;

 

3)   that there should be transparent accounting of all the costs of the new schools;

 

4)  that the following motion be sent to the Executive Member for Children’s Services and the Chairman of Children’s Services Overview and Scrutiny Committee, with an explanation of the School Forum’s concerns :

“The Schools Forum will adopt the principle that the funding mechanism for the provision of new schools should not have a detrimental impact on existing schools.”

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