To comment on the Cabinet report. 

(For information School Forum reports from 2 November 2017 are attached).

Members considered the report that set out the Council’s financial performance to date in 2017-18. Pressures continue within Children’s Services with a net overspend of £1,659,000.  The service continued to see high agency costs, home to school transport, legal costs and placement costs for children in care.  There was also a pressure relating to the dedicated schools grant and reports recently presented to the Schools Forum on this issue had been included on the agenda.

The Chairman asked if the need for out of area placements was due to lack of local availability or the need for children to be moved out of the area.  The Panel were informed that both were considerations and that there were less foster careers in relation to the growing pool of children.

Cllr Jones mentioned that over the last few years Children’s services have had a number of budget pressures and that this should be taken into account in the budget build.

The Director of Children’s Services informed the Panel that the last Schools Forum meeting had received three reports relating to the national funding formula and the dedicated schools grant. 

The Panel were informed that the Royal Borough had considered a number of options to migrate from the current local formula towards the NFF rates over the two ‘soft’ formula years and the impact of this was shown per sector. 14 models of different scenarios had been run to try and work out the best fit for our schools. The first two models were run under the assumption that there would be a 0.5% transfer from the schools block into the high needs block, the third model did not include this transfer. All models were based on 2017/18 data.

The proposal to transfer 0.5% from the Schools Block to the High Needs block was to support the implementation of the SEND strategy implementation action plan being led by a Schools Forum working group. The idea was to use the proposed transfer to reduce demand on the high needs block.

The Chairman asked if the reports and recommendations had been well received by the Schools Forum and the Panel were informed that the Forum had been supportive of the 0.5% transfer into the high needs block to help support work being undertaken to reduce the deficit.  Cllr Jones asked if the 0.5% would be ring-fenced and it was confirmed that it would.

Cllr E Wilson mentioned that small schools would be impacted by the NFF and asked what the Schools Forum were saying about this.  The Panel were informed that the Schools Forum were aware of the impact of the NFF and that they had supported that initiatives such as shared resources or using MATS should be explored. The Panel recommended that a strategy for small schools should be explored.

Resolved unanimously: that the Children’s Services O&S Panel considered the Cabinet report and fully endorsed the recommendations. As part of their deliberations the Panel also considered the Schools Forum reports relating to the National Funding Formula (NFF); the Panel recommended that Cabinet make it a priority to look at the impact NFF will have on our small schools and any mitigating actions that can be taken.