Agenda item

Melanie Ellis introduced the report (Agenda Item 6), which aimed to review the exceptional Growth Fund application from The Calcots and decide whether to award a payment to the school from the growth funding 2021/22.

In December each year following the confirmation of the autumn census numbers, schools were invited to make an application to the Growth Fund if they met the criteria. The Calcots had submitted an application earlier than normal because during the five months following the October 2020 census, the pupil numbers at the school had increased by seven with five additional pupils in Reception. The school had stated that two classes of 32 Reception pupils was unsafe and larger groups of mixed ability pupils was not feasible due to physical constraints of classroom sizes. Classrooms at the school could physically only accommodate 26 children due to dimensions.

The application had been considered by the Heads’ Funding Group (HFG) in June 2021 however, further information had been requested due to the applications similarity to another recent application, which had been refused. As a result the report included additional detail under section five, which provided a comparison to previous bids and set out how the calculations had been carried out. Section 5.5 showed that Calcot School had needed to provide an additional class, whereas the other school could have for moved to a mixed year group for one year. The HFG had therefore been in support of the application from The Calcots.

Melanie Ellis stated that the Growth Fund currently had a balance of £1.5m. If the application from The Calcots was agreed then there would be an initial payment of £27.5k for the period of April to August 2021 with a potential further payment of £38.5k to be agreed in December, following the invite to all schools to make an application to the Growth Fund following the autumn school census.

The Chair invited the Schools’ Forum to vote on the recommendation to approve the application from The Calcots as set out in section 2.1 of the report. Jonathan Chishick proposed that the application was approved and this was seconded by Ian Nichol. At the vote the motion was carried.

RESOLVED that the application from The Calcots to the Growth Fund was approved by the Schools’ Forum.