Management Information Sheet

Context: SEND Cluster funding.

During a full year the total funding being made available is £1.600 million. This new funding allocation is from within the Dedicated School Grant / High Needs Block and will be available from September 2014. This new funding allocation is intended to meet needs within school clusters, Capacity & Development.

It has been acknowledged that there continue to be capacity issues within the funding allocations to school clusters, as a result of the use of proxy indicators. Proxy Indicators are not meant to reflect the direct and specific needs of individual children and young people; the purpose is to allocate funding in a transparent and non-bureaucratic way.
However, there are sometimes unintended consequences via the use of proxy indicators and we do believe that at this stage of the development of our current funding model of SEND in Norfolk, the proxy indicator formula is not achieving an accurate allocation of funding in all circumstances.
Therefore, we want to enable clusters to access additional funding where there is clear evidence that the funding formula is leading to capacity issues and unmet need.

We also want to ensure that we promote and encourage the development of best practice within SEND cluster arrangements. There are increasing examples of clusters who are working in partnership to ensure the needs of all children and young people are met and planned for in a strategic way, anticipating individual learner need as well as the development needs of staff. We want to enable the best developments to continue and to provide funding, alongside our support and challenge role, if further development is required.

How can my Cluster Apply?

We want to establish this new capacity and development funding in a very flexible way, without too many constraints and minimising the work required to access funds.
However, we do need to be clear that we do not anticipate all clusters accessing this fund each year. This funding needs to be targeted to where the greatest need is, within both the capacity and development elements of the fund.
Therefore, we anticipate that each year the LA will be aware of approximately 10 school clusters that will require targeted capacity funding due to proxy indicator formula allocation issues. We would also anticipate approximately 10 school clusters per year that would have a legitimate requirement to access development funding.

The information contained within cluster development plans and SEN-D Action Plans will form the basis for an online submission.
Following receipt of the submission, the LA will make contact with the cluster host and arrange a meeting of key representatives from the cluster and the local authority.

The online form can be found here.

On receipt of the submission we will make contact with the cluster host and arrange to a meeting of key representatives from the cluster and the local authority. We anticipate this being a range of education and business specialists.

LA Monitoring and Impact Measures

There is a significant amount of funding now distributed to both individual schools and school clusters, now totalling in excess of £35million including this new SEND cluster Capacity and Development funding. We need to have arrangements in place to ensure this public expenditure is being used in the most effective way and that it is improving outcomes for children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities.

We will be building on the development of the SEND Cluster Health check and looking at other ways that we can ensure we quality assure and monitor the funding allocations that we make. Further work in this area will take place via the Schools’ Forum Learning Difficulties and Disabilities sub group and with Cluster SEND Leads.