Agenda and minutes

Apologies were received from Ian Harrison, Nigel Taylor, Matthew Glenn, Elizabeth Pearson and Angela Trigg. Cllr Brian Salinger attended as substitute for Elizabeth Pearson, Beata Felmer as substitute for Angela Trigg.

None.

Agreed as a true and accurate record.

VW updated the Forum on the Apprenticeship Levy. The government has confirmed that staff costs of community schools will count towards the liability of the council.

This is considered unfair and organisations are continuing to lobby central government to create a level playing field between schools. In the meantime, for the first year, due to the uncertainty associated with the levy implementation, the council proposes that it will cover the cost of levy contributions for community schools, rather than pass the cost on to individual schools. This is a significant investment for the council, likely to be in the region of £300-£400k. The introduction of the levy does represent a significant increase in investment in apprenticeship training however, and it is hoped that this will result in a significant increase in the number of local people taking up apprenticeship opportunities. It is envisaged that schools will very actively promote apprenticeship opportunities and at end of 2017/18, if it is felt that more apprenticeships would be generated by passing on levy contributions directly to schools, this option will be considered. As an indication of the potential impact on community school budgets, school levy contributions are currently in the £2k- £20k range

Cllr BS asked when bulge classes for September 2017 were going to be decided.

VW said the decisions had already been made.

CP introduced the item and drew attention to the financial report circulated. She explained that since the last Schools Forum meeting on 8^th December 2016, there had been no changes to the budget.

The third quarter provisional monitoring position forecasts an increase in the overspend of £247k. If there is an actual overspend, this will be the first call on DSG reserves.  CP went on to explain the reasons for over and underspends shown on the table in Appendix 1 by S251 line reference.

CP said there were no calls on contingency anticipated,  there was a reduction in net movement in OOB provision, additional bulge classes had resulted in an overspend, there had been a reduction in spend due to Oak Lodge’s academy conversion, increased expenditure for EYVF, but there was a small underspend that was less than Q2 projections. There has been a reduction in grant income.

The reserve position was £5m at the beginning of the year and there will be a drawdown of approximately £1.3m.

SV asked if there were any changes to the FEE2 eligibility criteria.

KP replied that EYVF was an additional type of funding, separate to FEE2, for children on a social care plan. They will now receive funding for a fixed period of time, usually 12 weeks rather than ongoing funding, at which point a progress review takes place.

a) 2017/18 Draft Budget

6b) 2017/18 APT Submission

6c) EYNFF

6d) NFF Consultation – stage 2

6a) 2017/18 Draft Budget

CG presented the paper in IH’s absence, referring to the table on page 21. She explained it had been updated since the December meeting and includes known as well as new DfE information.

The gross schools block income had been updated using pupil numbers on the October 2016 census and the net figure deducts academy recoupment. The cost of copyright licensing has been factored into the total, it is a deduction from the DSG.

EYPP and the new Early Years Disability Access Fund (EY DAF) is also included in the DSG income total.

The disability access fund (DAF) is being introduces as part of the Early Years National Funding Formula (EYNFF) from 2017/18 to help children with special educational needs (SEN) access early years places.

Under the terms of the EYNFF, local authorities must pass on at least 93% of the funding for 3&4 year olds to providers. Barnet is complying with this, with a notional pass through rate of £5.44 to providers.

There will be a new school admissions post, costing £40k, to increase school numbers.

Lines 1.5.1 to 1.5.3 are new lines on S251 in relation to former ESG statutory (retained) duties. The expenditure on these lines is £797k, matching the allocation received and retention of this funding was approved by Schools Forum at the last meeting.

The main call on the DSG underspend was to fund the cost of growth.  CP stated the expected call on reserves for 17/18 would be £1.5m. Moving forward and as a result of implementation of the NFF in 2018/19 and 2019/20, there is likely to be a further call on reserve to fund growth.

Cllr Brian Sallinger asked with regard to school admissions whether the Education department funds investigating fraudulent school applications.  VW replied that the council bears this cost centrally.

6b) APT submission

CG introduced the paper and said that the Minimum Funding Guarantee continues at -1.5%, as in 2016/17.  She went on to explain that under capping arrangements applied for 2017/18, schools would retain up to 2.25% of any gains to ensure as many schools as possible were above the minimum funding level prior to implementation of the National Funding Formula.

As a result of the revised IDACI bands published by the ONS in 2015, the funded bands have been reprofiled by the DfE. 

Barnet always paid the top 3 bands, but as no Barnet pupils fell into Band 6, Bands 3, 4 and 5 were used in 2016/17.  Due to the reprofiling, Barnet now has pupils in the most highly deprived Bands, so we have reverted to funding the top 3 most deprived bands, now classified as A, B and C.

The formula funding rates shown on page 23 have been submitted on the APT and will be going to CELS for ratification on 21^st Feb.

6c) Early Years

KP reminded members that the EYNFF was announced in December 2016, and that an additional 15 hours free entitlement would be available for  ...  view the full minutes text for item 6.

NA presented the item, explaining there were 4 main changes:

1)    Salaries: non-teaching employees to be paid in accordance with the Unified Reward Scheme

2)    That the council should be allowed to examine the medium term financial plans of schools. It is important to know schools are prepared with 3 year plans and the council should be able to check whether they are realistic and to help avoid schools being in deficit positions.

3)    Schools would be audited in a 3-5 year cycle. The audit committee found, on rare occasions, that high-priority recommendations weren’t implemented.

BS advised that the audit committee can request that chairs and heads appear before them if the recommended actions are not put into place.

4)    It is proposed to increase the level of spending for building works and ICT purchases to £6,000. It is a considerable increase but the current level doesn’t meet requirements. The new levels would assist schools.

LL asked whether a model appraisal framework for non-teaching staff would be provided in light of implementation of the Unified Reward scheme in community schools. This was confirmed.

Cllr BS said with regards to IT in larger schools, spending £6k was not difficult. However, in smaller schools, this amount would be difficult or impossible to spend.

GK said this wasn’t really the case, and referred to his own school as an example, which needed to spend £12k on a new server.

NA added that it depended on how the school’s ICT plan was formulated.

GK said that a decision was required for the proposed Scheme changes but the meeting was not quorate (BF had left the meeting early).

SH said the only option was to vote to recommend as it was not possible to delegate the decision to the chair as the meeting was not quorate.

Result of vote to recommend: Approved (but meeting not quorate)**.

Post meeting note: In light of the high level of Schools Forum vacancies, the number of members currently needed for the meeting to be quorate is 9 (40% of 21 voting members, excludes vacancies).  There were 10 voting members in attendance at the February meeting, so the minutes now show that this items has now been recorded as quorum approved.

Closing bulge class adjustments

CG presented this paper and asked if a vote could be taken to recommend a funding adjustment for closing bulge classes, so that bulge classes/pupil numbers could be adjusted when they move out of the schools upper year group.

BS asked what would happen if a school needed to make someone redundant as a result of a bulge class leaving and therefore incurred extra costs because of this.

SH said the schools might have made different arrangements, such as taking on temporary staff for a bulge class.

KN commented that just because someone was on a temporary contract, this did not mean they didn’t incur redundancy costs.

GK asked how often something like this happened.  CG said this applied to 4 schools for 2017/18.

VW stated this had previously been approved by Schools Forum, but continued approval was required.

The vote to recommend was unanimous, but the meeting was not quorate**.

**Post meeting note: In light of the high level of Schools Forum vacancies, the number of members currently needed for the meeting to be quorate is 9 (40% of 21 voting members, excludes vacancies).  There were 10 voting members in attendance at the February meeting, so the minutes now show that the recommended items have now been recorded as quorum approved.

Meeting Attendance

Keith Nason suggested writing a letter to those who did not attend the meeting to ensure that it would be quorate in the future.

Members approved the draft agenda for the next meeting:

1. Apologies
2. Declarations of interest
3. Minutes of previous meeting
4. Matters arising
5. Items for information
6. Towards a National Funding Formula
7. Draft agenda for next meeting
8. Dates of future meetings
9. Appendices

·        11 May 2017      4pm, BEST hub

·        6 July 2017                  4pm, BEST hub