Agenda item

Jane Seymour introduced the report, which sought agreement from the Schools’ Forum to increase the value of special school funding bands by five percent.

The funding scheme for special schools was devised in 2013 and since the funding scheme was introduced, the value of the special school funding bands had never been increased. There had been a 0.5% reduction in 2016/17 as part of a range of savings to address the overspend in the HNB.

Jane Seymour reported that there had been no increase in the value of the funding bands for children with EHCPs in mainstream schools and resourced schools. Special Schools were impacted on to a greater extent by this as all other their children had EHCPs and therefore all of their funding was derived from the high needs funding arrangements.

Since 2013, mainstream schools budgets had increased by 13.1% while special school budgets had decreased by 0.5%. The result of this was that special schools had been reliant on carried forward funding which was now reducing and they also had needed to make reductions to their provisions, which were listed under section 4.5 of the report.

Both special schools had reported that they would have to set a deficit budget for 2021-22 to avoid provision for children becoming unsafe if there was no increase in funding. Jane Seymour reported that Reading Borough had taken the decision to increase the value of its special school funding bands in 2021/22 by five percent.

Jane Seymour reported that to maintain the quality of provision and avoid special schools going into deficit it was proposed that the special school funding bands were increased by five percent. The approximate cost of this increase would be about £214k.

Gemma Piper believed that Reading Borough Council were applying a two percent increase to all EHCPs. Jane Seymour reported that she was only aware of an increase of five percent for special schools but she would seek clarity from her contacts at Reading Borough.

The Chairman invited the Forum to consider the recommendation to increase the value of funding bands for West Berkshire mainstreamed special schools by five percent. Keith Harvey proposed that the Forum approve the recommendation and this was seconded by Hilary Latimer. At the vote the motion was carried.

RESOLVED that recommendation 2.1 to increase the value of funding bands for mainstream special schools by five percent was approved by the Schools’ Forum.