The North Northamptonshire Schools Forum met on 10 July 2025 to discuss the Dedicated Schools Grant outturn, maintained school balances and licensed deficits, and a pupil growth fund update. The forum was also scheduled to elect a chair and vice-chair.

2025/26 Pupil Growth Fund Update

The Schools Forum was scheduled to receive an update on the allocation of the Pupil Growth Fund (PGF) against the current policy position for the 2024/25 and 2025/26 financial years. The PGF provides revenue funding to schools to employ staff to provide new school places. The report pack also included a proposed revision to the Growth Fund Policy to bring it in line with Department for Education (DfE) guidance, as outlined in the Growth and falling rolls fund guidance: 2024 to 2025.

The 2025/26 PGF rates are based upon average teacher costs:

• Primary school teacher: £41,648 per 30 additional places
• Secondary school teacher: £52,587 per 30 additional places
• Primary school LSA¹: £14,195 per class of 30
• Secondary school LSA: £26,752 per class of 30
• Primary school resources: £1,000
• Secondary school resources: £3,000

The report pack noted that any school that receives PGF funding gets it in two tranches because the local authority operates on a financial year (1 April–31 March) and schools operate on an academic year. The local authority can recoup any PGF funding paid to an academy from the Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) made in the period 1 April to 31 August annually, due to the way academies are funded.

Funding will be pro-rated for part form or multiples of full form of entry. Payments will be made for each year that the school is growing until the earliest of the following:

• The school reaches full capacity attributable to the increase in PAN² approved by the Assistant Director of Education
• The Growth Fund criteria change due to affordability
• There is a change in the funding formula as directed from the DfE

The table below shows the committed spend against the allocated budget of £3,603,019 for 2025-26:

The report pack also included pupil growth fund projections for 2026/27. It said that work is ongoing to understand the overall demand for places and there remains a potential requirement to secure additional bulge primary capacity linked to the impact of housing development.

The report pack stated that the impact of in-year pressures plus the forecasted deficit of all school places for September 2026 and onwards has resulted in North Northamptonshire Council seeking bulge capacity across a number of secondary schools in all planning areas in order to meet its statutory duty to provide school places. This also includes seeking some increased permanent PAN increases across all planning areas accompanied by significant capital investment to provide permanent expansions.

Based on these current projections based on the current policy it is anticipated that the PGF for the 2026/27 financial year would need to be around £1.2 million.

The report pack stated that much closer monitoring of the sufficiency of school places is being tracked, by new weekly data sets which captures school admission movements.

2024/25 Maintained School Balances and Licensed Deficits

The Schools Forum was scheduled to be informed of the 2024-25 maintained school balances as at 31 March 2025.

At the start of April 2024, the net total balances for the 38 North Northamptonshire Council maintained schools amounted to £4.9 million. This total included £3.9 million in revenue balances and £974,000 in capital balances. By the end of the financial year 2024-25, the total balances had decreased to £1.5 million, with £2.6 million in revenue balances and £791,000 in capital balances.

At the beginning of the 2024-25 financial year, five schools were in deficit. By the end of the financial year, the number of schools in deficit had increased to ten.

The table below provides a summary of the financial position for 2024-25:

Historically the DfE has advised that nursery, primary, and special schools should aim to hold a balance of around 8% of their income, with a lower figure of 5% for secondary schools. However, the North Northamptonshire Scheme for Financing Schools sets this figure at 10%.

Schools may carry forward from one financial year to the next any shortfall in expenditure relative to the school's budget share for the year plus/minus any balance brought forward from the previous year.

Surplus balances held by schools are subject to restrictions, including that if the result of steps is a sum greater than 10% of the current year's budget share for primary, nursery and special schools, then the local authority shall deduct from the current year's budget share an amount equal to the excess.

The report pack stated that in order to facilitate strong monitoring and proactive intervention planning, a report was presented to the school forum in October 2024 regarding School's deficit budget policy in wake of the current and increasing challenging economic climate schools must operate within. North Northamptonshire Council's Scheme for Financing Schools sets out the terms and conditions that maintained schools are expected to comply and operate within. The scheme prohibits maintained schools from planning for a deficit when preparing their budget plans.

Schools must submit a deficit recovery plan to North Northamptonshire Council when their revenue deficit rises above 1% on 31 March of any year.

Schools applying for a licensed deficit may be allowed to plan for a deficit budget in exceptional circumstances with the agreement of the North Northamptonshire Council Chief Finance Officer and subject to restrictions.

During the challenging climate, the School's Finance Team at North Northamptonshire Council will play a crucial role in assisting schools with deficits. They will actively support schools in developing recovery plans, providing tailored guidance to address financial challenges. Through monthly monitoring reports, the finance team will closely track the financial progress of schools, promptly identifying any concerns and offering necessary support. This will be then reported back to School Forum.

DSG Outturn 2024/25

The Schools Forum was scheduled to be informed of the draft outturn financial position of the Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG) against the budget for 2024-25.

The DSG is a ring-fenced specific grant allocated to the council by the government to support a range of education related services. The DfE currently operate a four-block funding model for funding schools and pre-16 education including early years:

• Schools Block: The largest element of the DSG and is allocated to schools and academies for day-to-day spending in their individual budgets.
• Central Schools Services Block: Provides funding for local authorities to carry out central functions on behalf of maintained schools and academies.
• High Needs Block: Supports provision for children and young people with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) from their early years to age 25.
• Early Years Block: Provides funding for Under 2's 2-, 3- and 4- year-olds.

The DSG Grant for 2024/25 amounted to £388.440 million. This was adjusted and agreed at full council to include a budget deficit of £7.705 million for the High Needs block.

The draft outturn position of £6.798 million, the net spend is forecasted to be £403.347 million against the approved budget resulting in an overall deficit of £14.503 million.

The table below summarises the Dedicated Schools Grants Forecast Outturn for 2024/25:

The outturn for the 2023/24 financial year reported a carried-forward deficit of £6.869 million. When this is combined with the draft outturn position for 2024/25, which currently stands at £14.503 million, the total cumulative deficit amounts to £21.372 million.

The report pack stated that the national pressure on services to support the education of children with additional needs is well documented and that many councils are struggling to contain expenditure within the budget available to meet needs.

The School's Block draft outturn position is an underspend of £1.401 million, primarily attributed to reduced spending on planned growth, as the development of committed projects planned for the 2024/25 financial year has progressed at a slower pace than originally anticipated.

The Central Schools Block draft outturn position is an overspend of £91,000, which mainly relates to the School Admissions staffing budget.

The Early Years Block draft outturn position is an underspend of £2.526 million, primarily due to lower spending on Deprivation, TPPG³, and SENIF⁴.

The High Needs Block draft outturn position is an overspend of £10.634 million.

The table below summarises the High Needs Block draft outturn position:

The report pack stated that in 2024/25 work will continue to mitigate these pressures, the Schools Forum agreed to a transfer of funding from the Schools Block (SB) of the DSG to HNB, this amounts to circa £1.5 million additional funding for the HNB.

The way in which local authorities account for Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG) deficits has been amended by The Local Authorities (Capital Finance and Accounting) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2020, which require DSG deficits to be held in a separate reserve in local authorities' accounts.

The planning and reporting of DSG deficits by local authorities continues to be governed by The School and Early Years Finance and Childcare (Provision of Information About Young Children) (Amendment) (England) Regulations 2024.

Urgent Business

The agenda allowed time for any urgent business to be raised.