Peterborough Schools Forum Wednesday, 23 rd September 2015 9:30 am to 12:00pm Venue: Carle Room Central Library Attendees Nick Guest (Chair) (NG) Thorpe Primary School Primary Representative Mike Sandeman (MS) Arthur Mellows Village College Academy Representative Pamela Kilbey (PK) Jack Hunt Secondary School Representative Richard Lord (RL) Ken Stimpson Community School Secondary School Representative Deborah Reynolds (DR) Norwood Primary Primary Representative Rachel Hutchinson (RH) All Saints Primary School Primary Representative Colette Firth (CF) Peterborough Diocese Board of Education Primary Representative Simon Eardley (SE) Orton Wistow Primary Primary Representative Anne Neary (AN) Hampton Vale Primary School Primary Representative Mark Woods (MW) Nene Park Academy Academy Representative Val Grys (VG) The Learning Tree PVI Representative Philippa Cherry Governors Leadership Group Governor Representative Caroline Behan (CB) School Business Manager Observer Councillor John Holdich Cabinet Member for Education (Skills & Observer (JH) University) Jonathan Lewis () Service Director: Education, People Peterborough City Council Resources and Corporate Property Steve Whitley () Schools & Settings Finance Manager Peterborough City Council Margaret Courtman (MC) Senior Accountant Peterborough City Council Sadie Wiles (i) School Business Manager Observer Daren Ayling The King s School Observer Michael Horspole CMAT Observer Rhys Thrower (RT) Wittering Primary School Primary Representative Claire George (CG) Pupil Referral Service Peterborough City Council Rachel Davies Senior Accountant Peterborough City Council Apologies Adam Brewster (AB) Heltwate Special School Special School Representative Debbie Hayes (DH) Caverstede Nursery Nursery School Representative Neil Grayson (NG) Alpha Kindergarten PVI Representative Councillor John Holdich Cabinet Member for Education (Skills & Observer (JH) University) Helen Amendola (HA) Executive Assistant Peterborough City Council 1. Apologies / Declaration of Interest / Housekeeping Action 1.1 Apologies received as above. 1.2 Housekeeping issues covered. 1.3 Declarations of Interest: none. 2. Minutes of the Last Meeting and Matters Arising Page 1 of 5
2.1 Minutes from the previous meeting (6 th May 2015) are to be amended to show Caroline Behan as giving her apologies. All other content from the previous meeting were agreed as a true and accurate record. Actions from the previous meeting: 2.2 EMAS UK Software advised he was awaiting confirmation from schools if they wish to continue to purchase the EMAS software. Action 2.3 Headspace advised comments from past events had been circulated. 2.4 EAL Academy A report will be presented at the next meeting. 2.5 Educational Psychologists feedback was received from Schools Forum that they were seeing a reduction in service and there are concerns that the 90k was not being invested in the service. advised that the LA was an EP post down which is currently being recruited to. advised a paper would be presented at the next Schools Forum confirming how the 90k has been used and plans for 2016-17. 2.6 Accountability of School Improvement Board confirmed a paper will be presented at the next Schools Forum. 2.7 Schools Balances A question was raised whether the 4k clawed back from schools balances had been used to advertise the new Peterborough recruitment website. confirmed a he has a meeting scheduled with Athena Communications and that an advert will be planned for the spring term / 3. Schools Forum Membership & Constitution 3.1 In May 2015 the Education Funding Agency (EFA) published Schools Forum Operational and Good Practice Guidance for 2015. The guidance was reviewed and used to remind Schools Forum members of their roles and responsibilities. There was a particular focus on Schools Forum decision making powers and consultative powers. 3.2 Schools Forum regulations recommend representation should be reflective of its pupil population. An analysis of the January 2015 census was presented to Schools Forum splitting the pupil numbers by phase and status (academy/maintained). This analysis had been revisited in response to the opening of two new schools and an increase in the number of schools transferring to academy status. The analysis suggested that Schools Forum may want to revisit the make-up of Schools Forum. A reduction of a maintained member and an addition of an academy member from the primary phase and a reduction of a maintained member in the secondary phase would make Schools Forum more representative of the pupil population. 3.3 The report also highlighted that the academy primary seat was now vacant following Emma Ward s resignation from Schools Forum. confirmed he had emailed primary academies to ask for volunteers. Pamela Kilbey s term had also come to an end. It was agreed that Pamela continue until proposals on Schools Forum membership had been made and agreed. Proposals on Schools Forum membership to be presented at the next meeting. 4. Schools Funding Principles 4.1 provided some context around funding principles. Schools Forum were reminded that they acting on behalf of all children in Peterborough and not in the interest of their own schools. Decisions that are made should be informed, principled, transparent and fair and there will be winners and losers. Page 2 of 5
5 New Schools Funding 5.1 advised Schools Forum that every local authority is required to have a mechanism for funding new school. Whilst Peterborough had a mechanism in place for funding new primary schools there was nothing in place for secondary schools. 5.2 The EFA already has a policy for funding new free schools and it was proposed that Peterborough should mirror that policy and also draw on Cambridgeshire s recent experiences of opening a new secondary school. 5.3 The proposed policy covered three areas: pre-opening costs, dis-economies funding and formula funding. Pre-opening costs would be a lump sum of 50k in primary and 150k in secondary and will cover project management, staff recruitment, salary cost for Headteacher and finance support and administration of admissions. Dis-economies funding would be an amount for each new mainstream place created ( 125 in primary and 500 in secondary) plus a variable lump sum based on the number of empty year groups. This funding would contribute to resources and leadership costs. New schools should be funded using Peterborough s funding formula but an application should be made for a variation in pupil numbers to reflect the projected growth. 5.4 confirmed that we currently had a piece meal approach and a move to a formulaic approach would be more transparent. MW raised the issue that new schools should be able to draw-down the dis-economies funding early to meet the costs they were incurring. PK commented that having a clear policy would make funding more transparent which could only be a good thing. 5.5 MW questioned whether the EFA would be responsible for funding this going forward as all new schools would now be opened as free schools. confirmed that it depended on the framework used to open the free school but he would investigate further and report back at the next meeting. 5.6 Schools Forum agreed the policy subject to clarification to the point raised 5.5 and subject to an annual review. 6 Benchmarking 6.1 Following a request at the May Schools Forum meeting further benchmarking information was presented to Schools Forum. 6.2 A table was presented showing the proportions of funding allocated on each pupil led factors. The table was split by phase (primary/secondary) and by groups of local authorities: Peterborough, statistical neighbours, regional neighbours, all other local authorities and all local authorities. MW commented that it would be useful to have the information to two decimal places as 1% represented 573k in the secondary phase and the decimal places were therefore relevant. advised he would update for the next meeting. commented that the primary position was where we would expect it to be although we looked a little high on EAL but that this was reflective of the migration into the city. It was commented that prior attainment looked high in the secondary phase. advised that this would have been the impact of the criteria changing in 2015/16 from pupils who achieved a Level 3 or below in English and mathematics at Key Stage 2 to English or Maths. It was requested that models the impact of moving funding from prior attainment in secondary to the basic entitlement. It was also commented that EAL looked high. advised that Peterborough s EAL GCSE results were the lowest nationally in June 2014. Page 3 of 5
6.3 The paper provided information on pupil level funding which included several strands of funding. It was commented that whilst this was informative it would be useful to have the same analysis for all strands of schools funding and income. advised that the local authority had this information for maintained schools but not for academies. Academies had been approached for this information but the was concerns with how the data was going to be used, the workload involved in reporting the information in the required format and complexities around certain funding streams such and post 16 funding, commercial income etc. 7 2016/17 Schools Block 7.1 presented a paper with initial proposals on the schools block for 2016/17. The paper covered key dates, schools block DSG funding, formula funding, combined budgets, centrally retained budgets and de-delegations. 7.2 explained that there were two key dates with regards the submission of the schools block budget plans to the EFA for 2016/17. The first was the 30 th October 2015 when the local authority was required submit its plans for what factors would be included in its funding formula. This needed to be submitted via the APT containing the October 2014 census data. The second was 21 st January 2016 which should be the final schools budget allocations using the APT containing the October 2015 census data. 7.3 explained how the local authority would receive its 2016-17 schools block DSG based on Peterborough s Schools Block Unit of Funding (SBUF) multiplied by the October 2015 census numbers. Peterborough s SBUF has increased in 2016-17 but this was only to reflect a change in the funding policy for how recoupment academies were funded and that this was not an actual increase in the DSG. 7.4 then explained the current arrangements for each of the funding factors available to the local authority. The following observations / comments were made: Deprivation had free school meal take-up dropped with the introduction of universal infant free schools meals? It was advised that initially there had been a reduction in take-up but schools were being pro-active in encouraging take up. Further analysis would be presented to Schools Forum is December. Deprivation why do we use IDACI when it is out of date? It was advised that there were issues with using both IDACI and FSM and that the local authority and Schools Forum had taken the decision of use a 50/50 split between IDACI and FSM to fund deprivation to minimise these issues. Deprivation How did the local authority come up with the unit values? It was advised that the unit values were derived initially by mapping the old funding formula factors to the new funding formula factors and then benchmarking year on year. Prior Attainment does this factor duplicate funding that was already allocated by the DFE for year 7 catch-up? It was advised that the drivers were similar and that the grant allocated for by the DFE was there to meet a specific government priority. Split site lump sum there was a general consensus of option that this factor needed to be reviewed and that whilst the benchmarking was informative the local authority needed to draw its own conclusions from information collected from the schools receiving the lump sum. It was agreed that would email the four schools to collect information on the additional cost they incur for having a split site. Formula factors for 2016/17 are to be agreed at October s meeting. 7.5 advised that the local authority, with agreement from Schools Forum, can retain DSG funding to pool budgets to fund services that fall outside of the schools budget Page 4 of 5
definition where historical arrangements are in place. The following provides a summary of the agreements made for each of the combined budgets: Headspace - 7,000 agreed Eco Schools - 10,000 agreed Employee Assistance Programme - 28,000 agreed Peterborough Learning Partnership - 50,000 paper to be presented at the next Schools Forum. Education Psychology - 90,000 - paper to be presented at the next Schools Forum School Improvement Board combined 560,000 - paper to be presented at the next Schools Forum Fisher Family Trust - 12,000 agreed 7.6 advised DSG funding could be retained centrally for certain areas of the schools budget but the allocation could not increase year and Schools Forum needed to approve the amount centrally retained. The following centrally retained budgets were agreed by Schools Forum: Business rates zeroing - 120,704 Subscriptions/Schools licences - 143,100 Admissions - 262,425 Servicing Schools Forum - 9,809 Redundancies - 408,429 Growth Funding - 1,250,000 7.7 The local authority can create pooled budgets by de-delegating funding from the schools budget shares. The following de-delegation were discussed: Facilities Time / Union Reps - 42,938 A paper is to be presented at the next schools formum NQT induction - 48,842 agreed EAL academy - 224,919 A paper is to be presented at the next schools forum. / 7.8 It was agreed that the current policy for funding growth could be rolled forward for 2016/17 but the values would need to be updated for pay awards and inflation. 8. Any Other Business 8.1 No AOB was raised. 9. Date and Time of next meeting Date: Wednesday, 21 st October 2015 Time: 9:30am 12:00pm Venue: Teach East Room, Central Library Page 5 of 5