Walsall school leaders to vote on free meal funding
Education leaders in Walsall will vote on giving local schools the choice of controlling their own funds to pay for services such as free school meals, library books and staff costs.
Members of Walsall’s Schools Forum, which is made up of headteachers and school governors from across the borough, will be making the decision.
The Schools Forum has a responsibility to provide maintained primary or secondary schools – schools which are funded and controlled by the local education authority – with the opportunity to decide whether to hand funding for relevant services back to the council for the 2019/20 financial year.
The decision to pass the funds back to the local authority can be informally discussed by school leaders, but the formal legally binding vote is cast by members of the Schools Forum.
If a particular primary or secondary school and the authority both decide they want the council to deliver a particular service, then a decision can be made to pass those funds back to the council.
The process only applies to maintained schools and not to academies, and only to primary and secondary schools and not to special schools, Pupil Referral Units or stand-alone nurseries.
Services schools can choose to pass back the funding for – or ‘de-delegate’ – include free school meals, insurance services, teaching staff costs, and support staff costs.
Walsall Council’s senior finance manager Lloyd Haynes explained the situation.
He said: “Local authority school members recognise that library services, maternity support and contingency are not being offered under de-delegation and that they will have to purchase any of these services they require individually.
“Behaviour Support Services is not included within the report either, as work is under way to review the structure of the service going forward.
“As such, a separate report regarding this service will be provided to the Schools Forum at their January meeting in the New Year.”
For each service a school passes back, authorities will need to make a clear statement of how the funding is being taken out of the formula.
A clear statement of how contingencies and other resources will be allocated is required. Academies will continue to receive a share of funding for these services in their delegated budget.
Where the decision to de-delegate is not approved, schools will need to identify the cost of procuring the service directly and ensure that they account for these costs when setting their school budget.
By Joe Sweeney
Local Democracy Reporter
