Agenda item

Cabinet Member: Cabinet Member for Children, Young People & Learning, Councillor Alisa Flemming

Officer: Interim Corporate Director of Children, Young People & Education, Debbie Jones

Key decision: yes

The Leader of the Council delegated authority to the Cabinet to make the following decisions:

RESOLVED: To approve the provisional funding formula for Croydon schools for the financial year 2022/23 for maintained schools, and the academic year 2022/23 for academies, in line with the recommendations of the School Forum:

a)        to agree for the phased implementation of the National Funding Formula in 2022/23 to ease the potential turbulence of moving to a hard formula at a later stage; and

b)        to agree the funding formula factors set out in Table 2 and paragraphs 4.5.1 to 5.5 of this report already voted on at schools forum.

Councillor Stuart King left the meeting at 9.06pm.

Cabinet considered a report which outlined the factors which were proposed for the setting of the schools budgets for 2022/23 through the Authority Proforma Tool (APT). These factors had been consulted on through Schools Forum meeting on 4 October 2021 and were voted on and approved on 8 November 2021 at forum with the exception of the PFI factor. The Cabinet Member for Children, Young People & Learning (Councillor Alisa Flemming) provided Cabinet with an introduction which set out:

• The DSG Management Plan had been taken to the General Purposes & Audit Committee (GPAC) in October 2021 and provided an updated on the councils plans to manage the balance, pressures and potential savings;
• The DSG was a ring fenced grant and the report specifically focussed on the schools block element of the funding, which was directly transported to schools;
• The Schools Forum was working in phased manner to the national funding formula; and
• The report had been considered and agreed by the Schools Formula.

Councillor Stuart King returned to the meeting at 9.08pm.

The Chair of the Schools Forum (Jolyon Roberts) provided Cabinet with context to the report and set out:

• The Schools Forum was a 40 member committee which met monthly. The membership included Head Teachers, Governors, officers and Councillors;
• The Forum dealt with the allocation of the DSG, which was valued at almost £400m. However, Schools Forum decisions only affected the schools block elements of the funding;
• The schools block funded mainstream and academy schools in Croydon and amounted to £286m; however the Forum had discretion in terms of certain elements of that funding;
• Assurance was provided that the Schools Forum considered the funding formulas in detail and debated matters at length;
• The Schools Forum was working towards a general strategy of the hard funding formula calculations in anticipation of its introduction;
• Thanks was provided to those who had chaired the working parties on each element of the DSG; and
• Concerns were raised in relation to the high needs block, however it was noted that there was a gap between the amount allocated and the amount spent which had primarily been caused by the decision to include 18 to 25 year old young people in the high needs block without additional funding. Mr Roberts stated that this gap had been reducing.

The Leader of the Council (Councillor Hamida Ali) thanked Jolyon Roberts for providing a context to the report and for his work with the Schools Forum.

During the consideration of the recommendations, the following points were made:

• The Chair of Scrutiny & Overview & Committee (Councillor Sean Fitzsimons) expressed concern that the report had been considered by GPAC and not the Children & Young People Scrutiny Sub-Committee. He noted that the only opportunity for scrutiny to consider the report was to call-in the decision. He requested that in future such reports were included in the Scrutiny Work Programme;
• The Shadow Cabinet Member for Children, Young People & Learning (Councillor Maria Gatland) welcomed the report and thanked Jolyon Roberts for his contribution. Assurances were provided by the Shadow Cabinet Member that the detail was fully considered by the Schools Forum; and
• The Cabinet Member committed that the council would look to have a discussion with scrutiny in relation to the DSG. The Cabinet Member further thanked all of the Head Teachers, teachers and teaching assistants in the borough for their work in ensuring the young people of the borough received an education during such a challenging period.

The Leader of the Council delegated authority to the Cabinet to make the following decisions:

RESOLVED: To approve the provisional funding formula for Croydon schools for the financial year 2022/23 for maintained schools, and the academic year 2022/23 for academies, in line with the recommendations of the School Forum:

a.    To agree for the phased implementation of the National Funding Formula in 2022/23 to ease the potential turbulence of moving to a hard formula at a later stage; and

b.    To agree the funding formula factors set out in Table 2 and paragraphs 4.5.1 to 5.5 of the report already voted on at schools forum.