The report of the Directorate Finance Lead – Children and Schools is attached.

The Forum considered a report of the Directorate Finance Lead – Children and Schools which provided information on the High Needs Supplementary Grant  2022/23 as announced by the Government following the Autumn 2021 Spending Review.  Additional funds had been allocated in respect of the additional costs associated with the Health and Social Care Levy as well as other cost increases that Local Authorities and schools will face during 2022/23. Manchester had been allocated £18m from the Government’s £1.6bn supplementary grant funding.  This was in addition to the city’s Dedicated School Grant settlement for 2022/23. The supplementary funding comprised of £14m for mainstream schools, Early Years and Post-16 provision, with a further £4m allocated to the High Needs block, special schools and alternative provisions. The DfE had published an indicative allocations calculator for mainstream schools.  Early Years and post-16 elements of the Grant would be allocated on a simple per-pupil basis.  However, no funding methodology for the distribution of the additional £4m high needs funding for special schools and alternative provisions had been put forward by the DfE other than an expectation that where Authorities agree to allocate additional supplementary funding to special schools it will form part of the element three top-up funding.  It had also been acknowledged that colleges and other providers offering extra hours of study to students with High Needs may require additional funding to support those students and established guidance indicated that element three top up funding should follow the pupil in real time.  The report also discussed the proposal to increase the special school element three top-up value for 2022/23 by a further 3%, funded by the Supplementary Grant in line with benchmarking exercises. This was in addition to the recent inflationary uplift on the top-up element as previously reported to the Forum (January 2022).  The impact of those increases were illustrated in the report.  The report went on to discuss the recent increases to High Needs block funding which were anticipated to shift the current deficit into a more sustainable position at a national level.  In the context of future increases over the next two years, as forecasted by DfE, and the need for the Council to ensure future financial sustainability, a further review of the additional 3% increase was proposed in respect of the final 2023/24 settlement to address financial  impacts within the High Needs block outside of special schools that will need to be met to avoid a detrimental impact on the HNB recovery.

The Forum was invited to comment on the allocation methodology of the grant and the proposal to review the 3% supplementary increase for special schools for the  2023/24 in terms of future financial sustainability.

There was a discussion about sustainability of block.  The Forum welcomed the methodology and the supplementary increase noting that this was likely to be a one-off increase to the special school element three top-up value. The Forum also noted that  the remainder of the grant would used to address the Local Authority’s High Needs deficit, in recognition that demands on the block continued to increase across the city.  The Forum also noted that some Authorities had chosen not to increase the special school element three top-up values and instead use the funds to address ongoing deficits in their High Needs blocks.

Decision

To note the report.