Indicative budget 2014/2015 – Special Schools

Explanatory Notes

These notes should be read in conjunction with your indicative budget statement for 2014/15

The explanatory notes unpack the changes in the 2014/15 budget.

1The funding approach for special schools in 2014/15

Special Schools continue to be funded on a Place-plus approach.Under ‘Place-Plus’ special schools will be funded on a combination of place led funding and pupil led funding.

●The place led funding will be fixed for a financial year based on the number of agreed planned places at each special school.

●The pupil ledfunding (also referred to as top-up funding) will reflectreal time pupil movements thereforethis element of funding will changeduring a financial year in line with pupil movements.

2014/15 Place led funding

The place led funding is pre-determined by the EFA, and is slightly different for pre and post 16.

●The place led funding for pre-16 is 10K per place.

●The place led funding for post-16:

For the period between April and July 2014, £11,164.50 per place (pro rata), and

For the period between Aug 2014 and Mar 2015, £10,000.00 per place (pro-rata).

The amount of place led funding shown on the ‘Place Led Funding’ sheet of your budget share statement is fixed for the financial year 2014/15.

The Place led funding for pre and post 16 is separately identified on the Indicative ‘Place Led Funding’ statement for the period Apr 14 to Jul 14 and Aug 14 to Mar 15.

Where schools are significantly over number the local authority will provide additional place funding at £10K per pupil for all the periods where a school is significantly over number. Please refer to the ‘Funding pupil above the number of planned places’ for details.

Pupil led funding 2014/15 (also referred to as Top-up funding)

●The top-up rate calculated is specific to each special school.All pupils in the same school will have the same top up rate in 2014/15.

●The amount of Top-up funding that a school receives is based on the real time movement of pupils and will be calculated based on the information held in SIMS (crosschecked against Council information).

●i.e. The top-up funding will be allocated pro-rata if a pupil joins/leaves the school). As a result your top-up funding will be indicative throughout the year, and only be finalised in March 2015.

●It is also therefore vitally important that schools register their pupils on SIMS from the day that a pupil joins/leaves the school. In 2013/14 some schools did not do this in a timely manner and would have lost funding they were eligible for if we had not adjusted this for them. In 2014/15 there we do not have capacity do carry out this checking process and schools will be funded based on the dates input on SIMS.

●The following pay and price inflation has been applied to arrive at the 2014/15 baseline budget share for each school.

Funding of teachers pay award of 1% (Apr 2014 to Mar 2015) although there hasn’t been any formal confirmation nationally.

Funding of officers pay award of 1% for 2014/15 financial year although this is subject to confirmation.

Funding of a 3.5% increase in Superannuation rates for officers for the 2014/15 financial year.

Funding of energy inflation for Gas (6%) and Electricity (8%)

Funding for the implementation of the Living Wage in 2013/14 and 2014/15.

Top-up Funding and Commissioning Relationships

The top up funding should be paid by commissioning local authorities. For example, in the case of a Coventry pupil placed in a Coventry Special School the top up will be funded by Coventry Local Authority. In the case of a pupil from another local authority placed in a Coventry Special School the top up funding will be paid by the pupil’s home Local Authority.

The top-up funding from Coventry and other Local Authorities are separately identified on the Indicative ‘Top-up Funding’statement. These are based on the January 2014 census and will be updated after each term. The final top-up funding (therefore final budget share) for 2014/15 will be confirmed following the end of the financial year once all pupil movements are known.

Although the DfE’s expectation is for individual schools to manage the commissioning relationship with other local authorities directly, the Local Authority has agreed with special schools to manage the invoicing and payment process on behalf of maintained special schools for 2014/15.

It is important for schools to inform the Local Authority (the SEN team specifically) of any requests from other local authorities for places.

Funding pupils above the number of planned places

Where a school is significantly over-number (i.e. more than 2.5% above planned places) that pupil will potentially attract an additional Place led allocation (£10k pro rata). The eligibility criteria for this funding are discussed with special schools and are shown below for your reference:

  • Short term over-number
  • No funding allocated for a period of 6 weeks or less
  • Long term over-number
  • If over number by 2.5% of planned places or less:
  • Top-up funding allocated (pro rata) for each pupil over-number, for period that school remains over-number after the initial 6 weeks.
  • No Place led funding allocated.
  • If over number by more than 2.5% of planned places:
  • Top-up funding allocated pro rata for period that school remains over-number after the initial 6 weeks.
  • Place led funding allocated (£10k prorata) for each FTE pupil over ‘planned places +2.5%’ for the period that the school remains over number by more than 2.5% after the initial 6 weeks.

Other Funding Elements Outside Place-plus

The Outreach Functions and Residual Residential Budget are funded outside the Place-plus approach. These funding elements are funded from the high needs block and are fixed for the financial year.

These are separately identified in the Indicative Summary of Funding statement. Relevantinflation has also been applied to these elements.

Pooled Budget Information

●The 2013/14 School Funding Reform required local authorities to make further delegation from currently centrally retained DSG budget to schools. These additional budgets were delegated to schools based on planned places and are included in the top-up funding rate.

●In addition, special schools have decided to pool some of the funding and return this to the Local Authority for continued service in 2014/15. These include funding for Free School Meal eligibility, Licences/subscriptions, Maternity, Trade Union, and Minority Group Support Service (MGSS). Therefore these services will continue to be provided to maintained schools free of charge in 2014/15.These returned budgets are not included in the top-up rate.

●Details of the amounts schools return to the Local Authority are clearly identified in the “Pooled BudgetInfo” sheet of the Indicative Budget Share statement for your information.

Minimum Funding Guarantee (MFG)

●There is a one year MFGlike protection for special schools at -1.5%. This protection applies to the top-up rate for each school and guarantees that if all places at the school were filled by Coventry pupils then the school will receive no less than 98.5% of the previous year’s budget (excluding over-number funding).

●The value of the MFG top-up rate for your school (and details of the calculation)isshown on the 'MFG Calculation' sheet, which accompanies the indicative budget shares.

2Pupil Premium Grant (PPG)

●This indicative funding is in addition to your budget share allocation. The Pupil Premium unit rates for the 2014/15 financial year (as set by the Department for Education) are as following, and apply to pupils in years R-11.

i)£1,300 per primary pupil that has been eligible for FSM in the last 6 years (Ever 6 FSM) based on Jan-14 census.

ii)£935 per secondary pupil that has been eligible for FSM in the last 6 years (Ever 6 FSM) based on Jan-14 census.

iii)£300 per child recorded as a Service child on any Jan Census in the last 4 years (Ever 4) or per child in receipt of pensions under the Armed Forces Compensation Scheme (AFCS) and the War Pensions Scheme (WPS).

iv)£1,900 per child that has been looked after for at least one day as recorded in the March 2014 ‘Children Looked After’ data return (SSDA903). Previously, eligibility relied upon the looked after period exceeding 6 months – this has now been removed.

v)£1,900 per child that has been adopted from care, or who left care under a Special Guardianship Order (SGO) or Residency Order (RO) as recorded on the Jan-14 census.

●The indicative Pupil Premium allocation on your ‘Summary of Funding’ sheet includes the FSM, Service Child and LAC elements at 2013/14 eligibility levels, using 2014/15 unit rates. No funding estimation has been made for the ‘adopted from care’ element of the Pupil Premium (see point v above) as the January-14 census has not yet been finalised and we do not have any historical data to use as eligibility for this criteria has not been collected before.

●Final allocations will be different to the indicative figure given, and will be based on 2014/15 data once it has been checked and finalised by the DfE. We will update the PPG allocations as soon as these are communicated to us during 2014/15.

●Using the 14/15 rates above schools will be able to better estimate their 14/15 allocation as they will have access to the data they supplied on the January-14 census.

●Further guidance from the DfE on PPG can be found via the link below:

3Capital Funding 2014/15

●Your budget share information pack does not include your Devolved Capital allocation as the DfE has yet to issue the settlement of the devolved formula capital for 2014/15. We will advise schools of their final allocation as soon as the information becomes available.

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