Issue - meetings

Background:

The Cabinet accepted the report as urgent as the next scheduled meeting of the Cabinet was due to take place on 12 January 2021 and consideration of the report on 12 January would be too late to enable the Schools Forum to consider, at its meeting on 13 January 2021, whether to recommend approval of the final funding formula to Cabinet for the Cabinet to consider on 4 February 2021.

This report provided details of the 2021-22 funding arrangements for schools and academies and set out proposed changes to Medway’s mainstream schools and academies provisional funding formula, following consideration by the Schools Forum on 3 December 2020.

The report stated that the financial modelling had been built using the October 2018 census data but that the final budget allocations would be based on actual pupil numbers from the autumn census in October 2020. The data was due to be released by the Department for Education in Mid-December 2020.

The Schools Forum’s recommendations were detailed in paragraph 4.2 of the report. This included implementation of a Medway schools and academies local funding formula from April 2021 and a recommendation to offer a Minimum Funding Per Pupil Guarantee of £4,180 for a Primary school/academy, £5,415 per pupil for secondary schools and £4,800 for an all-through school in 2021/22.

In order to balance the funding formula allocation back to the actual funding received, the Schools Forum had recommended that the local authority should adjust the factors set out at paragraph 3.5 of the report.

Reasons:

The local authority is required to implement the funding formula changes from 2021-22 in accordance with the regulations and to inform the Education Skills Funding Agency.