|
Bryan Slater Director of
Education |
Distribution |
|
Head
teachers and Chair of Governors All
Primary, Secondary and Special
Schools |
This document needs your action as detailed below:
|
ACTION |
Title
|
Indicative
Budget 2004/05 and Transitional Support |
||
|
Summary of
contents |
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
Associated
documents |
Letter
– Funding Schools in Financial Difficulties The
Financing of Maintained Schools (England) Regulations 2003 |
|||
|
Date |
9th
January 2004 |
|||
|
Summary of
action required |
|
|||
|
To be
completed by |
31st
January 2004 |
|||
|
LEA Contact |
Finance
Support Officer |
( |
|
|
|
E-mail
address |
|
|||
|
Norfolk Self
Review reference |
7. How well
is the school led and managed? 8. How well
does the school use its resources? |
|||
|
Document
reference |
MI
13-04 |
|
||
INDICATIVE BUDGET 2004/05 AND TRANSITIONAL
SUPPORT ARRANGEMENTS
Section 1 -
Indicative Budget 2004/05
You may recall I wrote to all Headteachers prior to Christmas outlining that we would produce indicative 2004/05 budgets for all schools early in January. I also explained that the process for determining schools’ eligibility to transitional support for schools in financial difficulty would also be set out in early January. This letter both sets out that process and includes the indicative 2004/05 budget for your school.
2004/05 Funding Level
The
indicative budgets have been produced on the assumptions that:
a)
Funding per pupil will
be increased by 4% in line with the Government’s per pupil guarantee.
b)
Norfolk will increase
School Budgets in 2004/05 in line with the Government increase in funding, ie
fully passporting.
c)
The allocation of
resources within the passported increase is in line with the draft discussed
with the Norfolk Schools Forum but before consideration by the Members at
Review Panel or Cabinet.
I enclose an indicative budget for 2004/05 for use in both estimating whether you will be eligible to transitional support as a school in financial difficulties and for preparing your three-year budget plans. This budget is indicative and therefore subject to change when final pupil numbers, details of the SEN audit and final funding levels are known and thus it does not constitute a guaranteed level of funding. This budget is at 2004/05 outturn prices.
In
preparing the indicative budgets the following assumptions and conditions have
been used:
AWPA
Pupil
numbers are based on the September count except for a small number of VA
primary schools where the expected January pupil intake has been added.
The
AWPA has been increased to include
100%
funding for the reception year
The
£1,595,000 additional government grant made available in April 2003.
An
amount for workforce reform
Inflation
at 2.5% for teachers pay, 3% for non-teachers pay and 2.5% for other price
increases.
Infant Class Size Grant
This
has been based on estimated phantom pupils at £936 per annum.
SEN Funding
There
has been no alteration to SEN
funding from 28 February, 2003 allocation as information from the audit is not
yet available.
Fixed
Sums and Additional School Specific Allowance
Allowances
have been uplifted for inflation with the exception of Salary Cost adjustment
which is unchanged and will be adjusted in the final allocations when salary
information is available.
The item on the allocation statement for
Prior year adjustment – is the adjustment to your 2003/04 Budget Share based on
September pupil numbers. This
adjustment was notified to schools in November. This may change after January PLASC figures are received.
An
additional funding line has been added to reflect the result of Fair Funding
consultation on school Broadband charges.
This additional funding is equivalent to the individual school
contributions to Norfolk Broadband Network.
The
Norfolk Broadband Network will appear as a new service in the Services to
Schools document and schools required to pay for the service in 2004/05 will find
a new charge, equivalent to the funding allocation, appearing on their Contract
to Purchase form.
Budget Change Protection - Minimum Funding
Guarantee
The
government has instructed that all schools should receive a guaranteed per
pupil increase based on 28 February, 2003 budget share plus the additional
government grant that Norfolk was awarded in April 2003 (£1,595,000). See appendix A for an example of how the
minimum-funding guarantee is calculated.
If a school is to receive additional funding to achieve the minimum
funding guarantee this is shown in section 5 of the attached indicative
budget. The amount shown under this
heading is the difference between the calculated guarantee and the formula
allocation determined from the Norfolk Scheme for Financing Schools.
There
are no reductions of budget shares where the formula allocation exceeds the
minimum guarantee.
Grants
a) School Standard Grant
The
grant equals the minimum of the sum previously announced by the DFES for
2004/05 or an increase of 4% per pupil whichever is the higher
b) Salary Support Grant
Based
on current threshold payments not inflated
c) Standards Fund
The
grant equals at least the 2003/04 devolved sums for the following activities
plus an increase of 4%. For 2004/05
these devolved grants have been amalgamated into one new grant SF1 School
Development Grant.
SF202 Special
Education Needs
SF206a Study
Support
SF206b Study Support (Excellence in Cities)
SF508a School Support Staff (All elements)
SF508b School Support Staff – Training and
Development
SF301 Literacy and Numeracy Devolved
(including YR6 Booster)
SF302c Key Stage 3 Strategy – Devolved
SF302e Key Stage 3 Behaviour and Attendance -
Devolved
Section 2 - Transitional Support
Arrangements
for providing transitional support to schools in financial difficulty are
subject to approval by the DfES. An
appropriate Plan has been submitted to the DfES and comments and approval are
awaited. As part of the process it is
proposed that schools with budget difficulties in 2004/5 and 2005/6 may be
entitled to transitional support with a view to bringing the vast majority of
schools into balance by 2006/07.
Schools
that may be eligible will be identified as those with either:
a
deficit at 31 March, 2005 and or 31 March, 2006, or
an in
year deficit during 2004/5 ie balances reducing between 31 March, 2004 and 31
March, 2005
However,
schools will be required to fund the first part of any deficit. The amount a school will be required to fund
will normally be equivalent to 2% of it’s budget share (including any LSC
allocation).
Section 3 - Actions Required –
ALL SCHOOLS
Based
on the indicative budget all schools are requested to:
Update
your year 2003/04 budget at current prices using the special budget planner
provided via AVCO.
Update
your forecasts from 2004/05 to 2006/07 using your indicative budget share to
assist you. These forecasts should be
at 2004/05 outturn prices.
Begin
the process immediately although you will not receive your actual 2004/05
budget share until 28 February, 2004.
If you
are unable to produce a balanced budget for any of the next three years then
you may be eligible for transitional financial assistance.
For
those schools that have recently revised their current budgets, a limited
amount of work should be necessary to update the figures using the indicative
budgets provided.
Section 4 – Action Required –
Schools Wishing to Access Transitional Support
The
first step in the process of a school accessing transitional support is for the
LEA to determine whether a school is eligible for such support. For the LEA to assess an individual school’s
eligibility for transitional support I will require the following by 30
January, 2004 (or if this deadline causes you significant difficulties by the 13
February at the very latest) in the specified format:
A
revised budget plan details of which are set out in section 3 above
2. An identification of the school’s true
year-end balance position. The analysis
of Planned Balance on the summary budget plan must be completed to demonstrate
the year-end balances for 31 March, 2004, 31 March, 2005, and 31 March, 2006
and to distinguish between money held for cluster activities; Standards Fund
money carried over from one period to the next; any funds held at year end
which are not at the schools disposal eg school journey money held in your LM
account; money held for one-off purposes eg building projects.
3. An identification of any one off
spending in 2004/05 funded from 31 March, 2004 balances.
NB.
Also being developed is a staff planning tool developed with the Advisory
Service. The tool helps a school
identify against local benchmark data areas of high staffing costs and the
underlying reasons for those high costs.
The secondary school version is available on the EFS website, ie
http://efs.norfolk.gov.uk/index.htm entitled staff planning tool -
secondary. The primary schools version
will be available in early February.
Section 5 – Next Steps/Support
As
stated above I require the information by the 31 January, 2004 or 13 February
at the very latest to determine whether a school is eligible to additional
transitional support. Based on school
returns I will be able to determine if a school appears eligible for additional
support. Once this part of the process
is complete schools will be notified by the end of February of their possible
eligibility. Subject to DfES approval
to the proposed arrangements, I will at this time also provide details of the
process and conditions attached to accessing the transitional support.
For
those schools wishing to access the transitional grant, revision clinics have
been set up at the Training Suite, Heartsease High School. Details of the clinics were included in my
previous letter dated 16 December and can also be found within the courses
section of the EFS website, http://efs.norfolk.gov.uk/index.htm (or telephone
Denise Beckett, Training Officer on 01603 224271).
If you
have any queries please contact your finance support officer.
Yours
sincerely
Paul
Fisher
Head
of Service