Agenda item

Ian Pearson introduced the report which set out the proposed High Needs Place Funding for 2016/17.

Place funding in 2015/16 was based initially on place funding allocated by the Education Funding Agency (EFA) in 2014/15. The local authority had attempted to make ‘exceptional’ requests for increases to the planned places at Brookfields, The Castle, Trinity ASD Resource, West Berkshire Training Consortium (WBTC) and Newbury College but all were refused apart from four planned places for the WBTC and Newbury College due to the stringent criteria. A formal challenge against this decision was unsuccessful; an experience shared with many other local authorities.

In 2016/17, local authorities would have the flexibility to move planned place funding between institutions in line with any changing patterns of need but there would be no overall increase in planned place funding.

The purpose of the report was to inform the Schools Forum of this matter and to open up a discussion.

Claire White provided an update that further information had been received the previous week, following the publication of the agenda that the local authority would only be permitted to reallocate place funding for pre-16 places. The local authority would be required to inform the DfE by 16 November 2015 if any changes were being proposed to the place funding for Academies. Clarification was offered that changes could be made to maintained Primary and Secondary Schools without informing the DfE.

Graham Spellman summarised that the proposal was to reallocate High Needs place funding from those schools that were undersubscribed to those that were oversubscribed as the local authority was not able to reallocate the High Needs Block funding. Claire White confirmed that it would be known in January 2016 whether any more funding would be available in the High Needs Block or not.

David Ramsden sought clarification on how the planned places for 2015/16 was calculated. Claire White answered that they were unchanged from 2014/15. A bid to cover exceptional growth had been attempted but had not been successful.

Ian Pearson commented that the government was underfunding Special Needs and it would be a challenging task to reallocate place funding in some cases in order to minimise the impact on the schools.

ACTION: an updated report would be considered by the Schools Forum on 7 December 2015.