Decision details

In order to prepare for a national funding formula, direction has been given to Local Authorities to review their formula of school funding to ensure that it fits with the government’s intentions for the future. The LA has developed its proposal and consulted schools on the proposal in order to allow the cabinet to decide on a formal methodology to submit to the Education Funding Agency.

(1) To AGREE that option 2 is submitted as the methodology to be adopted by Bath and North East Somerset Council from April 2013. This reflects an amendment to the proposal for the funding of Deprivation changing the split of resources between the Income Deprivation Affecting Children Index and free schools meals to 50:50 split. (Compared with the 75:25 split in the consultation proposal)

The consultation document was created by a working group of officers and school staff who developed the proposal after extensive modelling of various options that were available.  Having consulted all schools on the proposal and considered the responses, the best option was selected.

The selected option will:

·  Meet the government’s requirement that the funding formula must recognise social deprivation;

·  Retain funding at 7% rather than reducing it to 6%;

·  Balance the weighting equally between the IDACI index and the free school meals figures;

·  More effectively address rural deprivation.

The cap on losses and gains until 2014/15, will mitigate the effects of the new formula.

In developing a formula for the distribution of resources between schools there are inevitably numerous possibilities that could have been chosen. There could have been any number of changes to the levels of funding and the use of indices to distribute the funding.  It is not possible to list the multitude of options that could have been utilised.

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