Decision details

West Sussex County Council is required, under national funding regulations, to consult schools and the Schools Forum on proposed changes to funding arrangements affecting school budgets. The School Funding Review 2022/23 consultation document was published on 20th October 2021. Responses to the consultation and feedback from Schools Forum have been taken into account in the development of the local funding formula for mainstream schools in 2022/23.

To help pay for service improvements within the High Needs budget that will help to reduce the size of the Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG) deficit in future years a proposal to transfer £1.2m of funding from the Schools block to the High Needs block of the DSG was approved by Schools Forum at its meeting on 25th November 2021, and therefore has also been taken into account when setting the funding rates within the local funding formula for mainstream schools in 2022/23.

The Cabinet Member for Learning and Skills has agreed the approach to the local funding formula for mainstream schools as set out in section 2 of the report and approved the proposals in paragraph 2.30 of the report to:

(1) Continue to protect the primary lump sum at a rate of £130,000, by continuing to scale back the primary unit values for Low Prior Attainment (LPA) from the National Funding Formula (NFF) primary unit value,

(2) Reduce the NFF basic entitlement rates by 0.5% in order to help pay for the £1.2m transfer to the Dedicated Schools Grant High Needs block,

(3) Set the Minimum Funding Guarantee level at 1% to ensure that all mainstream schools benefit by this increase in their pupil-led funding.

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