Schools Forum – Thursday

• Attendance details
• Agenda frontsheet PDF 318 KB
• Agenda reports pack
• Agenda Supplement (1) PDF 796 KB
• Agenda Supplement (2) PDF 1015 KB
• Printed minutes PDF 603 KB

Media

Apologies were received from Georgina Keily-Theobald (Maintained Special School Representant/Co-Chair of WASSH), Nigel Roper (WASSH – Maintained Secondary Representative), Helean Hughes (Director – Education & Skills), and Cllr Laura Mayes (Cabinet Member for Children, Education & Skills).

Mark Cawley Early Years/PVI representative has resigned from Schools Forum as he has now sold his nursery business and also resigned from his position on the Early Years Reference Group.

Schools Forum welcomes contributions from members of the public. During the ongoing Covid-19 situation the Forum is operating revised procedures and the public are able participate in meetings online after registering with the officer named on this agenda, and in accordance with the deadlines below. A maximum of 15 minutes will be allocated to public participation at the start of each meeting.

Members of the public who wish to submit a statement in relation to an item on this agenda should submit this is electronically to the officer named on this

questions electronically to the officer named on the front of this agenda no later than 5pm on Thursday to allow a response to be formulated. Questions are limited to a maximum of local hook up com 2 per person or organisation.

The Forum noted the update received by way of the minutes of the meeting of the Early Years Reference Group meeting held on .

That Schools Forum note the minutes of the joint meeting of the School Funding and SEN working group held on and the Early Years Reference group meeting held on .

The report of Marie Taylor (Head of Finance – Children and Education) seeks to present budget monitoring information against the Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG) for the financial year as at .

· The forecast overspend was ?9.032 million against the overall dedicated schools’ grant budget. The main driver for the forecast variance was the ongoing pressures of the high needs block;

· There was a small underspend forecast for the Early Years budget of ?326K. For the spring 2021 term, the Governments expectation was that settings would remain open whilst the schools were closed, and they would only be paid for children attending settings;

· Due to the uncertainty, no variance is forecast on the budgets for the free entitlement for 15- and 30-hours childcare for 2,3 and 4-year-old. There were small underspends, but it was anticipated that the DfE’s post financial year adjustment would recover this in the summer;

· COMF grant funding of ?1 million had been received by the Local Authority to support, facilitate and aid containment of the virus specifically for early years. The deadline for applications to this funding is 22 nd March when payments would be assessed and assuming affordable up to the ?1 million would be paid. A report would be presented to the June meeting of the Forum to update on how this grant was spent;

· The forecast underspend on the Schools budget largely related to the school’s growth fund which currently shows an underspend of ?2.273 million and was helping to offset the overall pressure on the DSG;

· High Needs budgets were projected to overspend by ? million. The major driver of the increased cost was volume. If the current increase in EHCPS continues at this rate, 4056 EHCP’s are anticipated for the end of the year which was a 10.2% increase. The number of EHCPs being requested has slowed slightly which could be due to reduced face to face contact with pupils due to the Covid pandemic;

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