Agenda item

(Report by Mr R Gough, Cabinet Member for Education and Health Reform and Mr P Leeson, Corporate Director, Education Learning and Skills)

(Mr K Abbott, ELS Director Finance Business Partner, was present for this item)

1.            The Cabinet Committee received a report on the second quarter’s full budget monitoring report for 2013/14 for the Education, Learning and Skills Directorate which was reported to Cabinet on 2 December 2013.

2.            The Education, Learning and Skills Director of Finance Business Partner, Mr Abbott introduced the report and highlighted the following:

Revenue

·  the ELS Directorate Revenue Budget was forecasting an underspend of £1.95 million and that included an underspend of £1.37 million on the Kent Youth Employment Programme Placement and that money would fund those placements until 2015/16.  Therefore that money would need to be rolled forward and spent in future years.  The genuine underspend being forecast was £½ million. 

·  There were significant pressures with the Dedicated Schools Grant particularly coming through independent non maintained and on Early Years Foundation. 

·  There were also pressures on SEN Transport.

·  The forecast position for schools reserves was £1.8 to £1.9 million on the assumption that 24 schools would convert to academy status and 2 school closures.  

·  Three schools were predicting a deficit at the end of year 1 of their 3 year plans.

Capital

·  The Education, Learning and Skills Directorate had a working budget (excluding schools) for 2013/2014 of £149.868k.  The forecast outturn against the 2013/14 budget was £135,527k giving a variance of £14,341k.  The variance of £14,341k was made up of two elements (1)  £2.7 million was genuine underspend; and (2) £11.7 million was the rephrasing on the Basic Need projects for Special Schools and Early Years, the funding would be rolled forward. 

3.            Mr Abbott responded to comments and questions by Members which included the following:

a)     Mr Abbott advised that the income figure within the table under the heading “Attendance & Behaviour of £3,833.9 million was correct.  It would be generated from a predicted underspend in the penalty notice income, which was generated from the increase in the penalty notices to parents for pupils being absent from school.  A growing issue was parents choosing to take their children out of school during term time for cheap holidays and preferring to pay the penalty notice.

a)     Mr Abbott advised that part of the process of setting next year’s budget was looking at all the services that were trading to cover their costs.  The services had a number of plans to expand and increase the services they can charge for and this would close the gap between the higher costs for the provision of training and development courses and the income generated. 

b)     Mr Abbott explained that local authorities were given no extra funding when a school converted to academy status.  He confirmed that Kent had spent approximately £1 million of its own budget on schools converting to academy status.  This cost was unavoidable and covered the small team of staff, legal costs, and staff time from Human Resources, Property, and Finance etc. He advised that Kent and other local authorities had lobbied government regarding this.

c)      Concern was expressed about the large cost that the local authority had to bear from its own budget in schools converting to academy status.

d)     Mr Gough explained that the local authority was the issuer of the penalty charges and the collector of them but there were some elements that were at the discretion of the school.

1.            RESOLVED that:-

a)     the responses to comments and questions by Members set out in paragraph 3 above be noted; and

b)     the revenue and capital forecast variances from the budget for 2013/14 for the Education, Learning and Skills Directorate based on the second quarter’s full monitoring to Cabinet be noted.