EFA e-bulletin for schools, colleges, local authorities and other 16 to 19 providers: 23 February 2017
Published 23 February 2017
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This publication is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/efa-e-bulletin-23-february-2017-issue-163/efa-e-bulletin-for-schools-colleges-local-authorities-and-other-16-to-19-providers-23-february-2017
1. Information: post-16 funding allocation statements for 2017 to 2018
We’re in the process of uploading post-16 funding allocation statements for further education colleges, schools and academies to EFA Information Exchange. We expect the allocations for most of these institutions to be available by the end of February.
All files will be located in EFA Information Exchange in the Document Exchange ‘Revenue Funding’ folder, under ‘AY 2017-18 (2017/18)’.
To access Document Exchange log into EFA Information Exchange and choose the Document Exchange tab at the top of the page.
As in previous years, we have based funding allocations for 2017 to 2018 on your 2016 to 2017 lagged student numbers. The final allocation statement includes a breakdown of our calculation.
We have published information to help you understand your allocation. The allocation calculation toolkit and guidance help you understand the data we have used. If you have any queries please contact us using our online enquiry form.
We’ll consider business cases where there is a significant error in the data you have returned. The deadline for business cases is 7 April 2017. We will apply standard minimum thresholds to decide whether we will consider your case. Please review the thresholds published in the supporting information before submitting your business case.
For support and guidance about EFA Information Exchange, please visit our support page.
2. Information: dedicated schools grant (DSG) baselining exercise
For local authorities, we’ll be holding a further DSG baselining exercise in late March and early April 2017. The exercise will inform a starting position for the first year of the schools and high needs national funding formulae for 2018 to 2019.
We’ll be using the EFA data collection portal for this exercise.
We’ll issue a template and guidance to local authorities by the end of March 2017 to ensure they are fully prepared.
3. Information: maintained nursery school (MNS) assurance exercise
In March 2017, we’ll hold an assurance exercise on maintained nursery school expenditure (nursery schools maintained by local authorities). We mentioned this in December 2016 in the early years national funding formula (EYNFF) operational guidance.
This exercise will assure the data provided by local authorities during the 2016 to 2017 section 251 budget collection for use in the calculation of MNS supplementary funding.
We published initial MNS allocations in December 2016. Final allocations will be based on the outcome of this exercise.
We’ll send a pre-populated spreadsheet, with the section 251 budget values, to local authorities with maintained nursery schools in March.
Local authorities will need to confirm the values or supply evidence to justify any variation.
We’ll provide full technical guidance and a clear description of what evidence will be acceptable with this spreadsheet.