Management Information Sheet

At the end of Friday, the DfE published revised provisional funding allocations for 2024-25 for the schools national funding formulae (NFF). The DfE had published the schools NFF for 2024-25 in July but an error was made by DfE officials during the initial calculations of the NFF in relation to forecast pupil numbers, resulting in, effectively, over-allocating the core schools budget by 0.62% compared to the funding available. Therefore, the DfE has issued new NFF allocations to correct that error. For Norfolk, this is circa £5.6m less than previously indicated for the Schools Block for 2024-25.

The DfE have apologised for the error and have sought to assure that the recalculation of funding will still mean that the teacher pay increase agreed in 2023 will be properly funded, as the percentage increase at a national level is 3.2%. High Needs NFF allocations are unaffected, as are funding streams outside of NFF, including the teachers' pay additional grant (TPAG) the DfE announced in the summer. The DfE have also emphasised that schools have not yet received their 2024 to 2025 funding, and so the correction of this error does not mean adjusting any funding that schools have already received.

Last week, the LA issued the Fair Funding consultation with schools for the 2024-25 formula for distribution of the Schools Block along with the Notional SEN budget consultation and others. Schools were notified via an MI sheet last week and the consultations are live until Tuesday 31 October 2023. (See MI Sheet links below.)

The consultation papers, including the technical papers detailing the implications for each school, were based upon the July DfE funding announcement. These now all need to be revised due to the DfE announcement at the end of last week, because the overall funds available to Norfolk are lower.

We are working as quickly as possible to reissue these papers, but are partially hampered as the DfE have not reissued the Authority Pro-Forma Tool (APT) to align with their revised allocations yet, and this is normally used for such calculations. However, we are trying to work around this issue and hope to have revised papers out this week.

We will email all schools when the revised documentation has been uploaded. Any school that has already submitted a response is welcome to submit a revised response if desired.

We understand that this situation could be worrying for schools who have been planning for the medium term based upon the July announcement and we completely understand that this is not ideal in terms of timescales to respond to the consultation.

Unfortunately, due to DfE deadlines, we are not in a position to extend the time limits for the consultation and so would encourage as many schools and trusts as possible to respond please.

While every school is still anticipated to gain on a like-for-like pupil basis using the October 2022 census data, we expect that all schools will have a reduced indicative allocation compared to what we published last week.

In addition, we anticipate that the proposed cap on gains will be lower (or any alternative mechanism, such as scaling and capping). We will confirm this when the work is complete, but this means that the opportunity for consideration as to whether a 'hard cap' for gains is the right approach for Norfolk's formula is particularly key in these circumstances.

I expect that you'll agree with me that this is a really unfortunate situation and disappointing that the funding available to Norfolk schools next year will be less than previously thought. Unfortunately, due to the timescales of the next stages of the process, there really isn't any time to extend the consultation period and, therefore, we will be looking to add on additional engagement events beyond the ones planned for this week.

Kind regards,
James Wilson
Director of Sufficiency, Planning and Education Strategy

MI Sheets:

• Early Years Funding Formula Consultation - Autumn 2023 (MI Sheet 175/23)
• Fair Funding Consultation with Schools Autumn 2023 (MI Sheet 179/23)
• Notional SEN budget 2024-25 (MI Sheet 180/23)