Agenda item

Cabinet agreed to recommend the budgets to Council to:

(a)  Note the DSG allocations for Slough (Table 1) as published by the Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA)

(b)  Approve the local authority formula for allocating resources to Slough schools for 2024/25 as set out in Appendix A, the Authority Proforma Tool (APT).

(c)  Approve a transfer from the Schools Block allocation of £100,000 to the Central Schools Services Block and £761,539 to the High Needs Block in the 2024/25 financial year (£861,539 being 0.5% of the total schools' block allocation).

(d)  Approve the Dedicated Schools Grant Budget for 2024/25 at £231,514,470 including the allocations between the four funding blocks as set out in this report.

(e)  Delegate authority to the Executive Director – Children’s Services, in consultation with the Lead Member for Children and Education and the Executive Director for Finance and Commercial, to make minor changes to the schools’ budget in year.

The Lead Member for Education and Children’s Services introduced a report that sets out details of the 2024/2025 Dedicated School Grant (DSG) and the formula funding to be used in the Authority Proforma Tool submission which indicated the level of funding for each mainstream school in Slough.

The report outlined the four blocks of the DSG and current proposals to allocated the published DSG allocation.  It was noted that the Schools Forum had received the Schools Block and Early Years Block proposals at a meeting on 11^th January 2024 as well as allocation information for High Needs and Central Services.

ESFA required Member ratification of the formula funding to be used in the Authority Proforma Tool (APT) prior to distribution of final budgets to schools by 29th February 2024. The completed APT was returned to ESFA by the deadline of 22 Jan 2024. On this occasion, schools would receive indicative budgets with confirmation of ratification following the Council meeting.  In future years, the service would work with Democratic Services to ensure that the budget paper for DSG was discussed at a Council meeting in February to enable this deadline to be achieved.

At the conclusion of the discussion it was agreed to recommend the report to full Council on 7^th March 2024.

Recommended –

Cabinet agreed to recommend to Council to:

(a)  Note the DSG allocations for Slough (Table 1) as published by the Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA)

(b)  Approve the local authority formula for allocating resources to Slough schools for 2024/25 as set out in Appendix A, the Authority Proforma Tool (APT).

(c)  Approve a transfer from the Schools Block allocation of £100,000 to the Central Schools Services Block and £761,539 to the High Needs Block in the 2024/25 financial year (£861,539 being 0.5% of the total schools' block allocation).

(d)  Approve the Dedicated Schools Grant Budget for 2024/25 at £231,514,470 including the allocations between the four funding blocks as set out in this report.

(e)  Delegate authority to the Executive Director – Children’s Services, in consultation with the Lead Member for Children and Education and the Executive Director for Finance and Commercial, to make minor changes to the schools’ budget in year.