ESFA Update academies: 12 September 2018
Published 12 September 2018
Applies to England
© Crown copyright 2018
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1. Information: the bidding round for the 2019 Education Services Fund (ESF) opens on 14 September 2018
The Secretary of State for Defence has announced the extension of the ESF until 2019 to 2020. £3 million is available in 2018 to 2019, and £2 million is available in 2019 to 2020.
To be eligible for a grant a school must be in the UK and must have at least 1 service child, subject to exceptional mobility or deployment.
Applications can be accepted from:
- maintained schools
- academies
- free schools
- sixth form colleges
- groups of any schools described above (referred to as ‘cluster bids’ and are strongly encouraged)
- local authorities on behalf of the publicly funded schools in their area
Full details of the Education Support Fund grant, and how to apply, are available on GOV.UK.
2. Information: launch of the school nurseries capital fund
The department launched the school nurseries capital fund (SNCF) on 8 September 2018.
£30 million will be available to create more school-based nursery places for disadvantaged children.
Organisations interested in working in close partnership to develop a bid application should refer to the published guidance. Applications will only be accepted via local authorities.
The application form will be available from 24 September 2018. The deadline for submission of bids will be 22 November 2018.
3. Information: national non-domestic rates (NNDR): ‘how to claim’ video now available
Earlier this year we updated the online claim form for national non-domestic rates (NNDR).
We have now created a video to help support academies through the claims process. The video gives the user a step-by-step guide to the process of claiming NNDR.
The video covers topic such as creating a user account on the NNDR portal, submitting claims for previous years and submitting revised claims within a financial year.
If you have any further questions regarding the video or your national non-domestic rates claim, please contact us.
4. Information: workload reduction toolkit
The Department for Education (DfE) has published a workload reduction toolkit for school leaders and teachers.
The toolkit provides practical advice and tools to help review and reduce workload, including:
- advice for leaders to use with their staff to streamline processes
- tools to help schools identify and reduce time-consuming tasks
- case studies on schools which have reduced workload for their staff
You can contact DfE to provide feedback on the toolkit, or to get involved in user research.
5. Information: national deal for agency supply teachers
On 31 August 2018, the Department for Education launched a new national deal for agency supply teachers to help schools to get value for money when hiring agency workers.
DfE sent an email to schools with an agency selection tool attached. The agency selection tool lets you find and compare agencies on the deal in your area.
If you have not received this email, please contact us at supplyteacher.deal@education.gov.uk using your school’s email address listed on get information about schools and we will resend it.
The tool is password protected as it contains commercially sensitive information. You must read and accept the disclaimer before you can use the tool.
6. Information: online form for 16 to 19 Bursary Fund (bursary for vulnerable groups) academic year 2018 to 2019
The online form to claim the 16 to 19 Bursary Fund (bursary for vulnerable groups) for the academic year 2018 to 2019 is now available on the Student Bursary Support Service portal.
7. Information: customer survey about 16 to 19 revenue funding allocations
Supporting the delivery of 16 to 19 revenue funding allocations with good customer service is important to us. We would like you to complete a short survey to help us understand how you feel about the service we provide and the products we publish to support 16 to 19 revenue funding allocations.
It should take less than 10 minutes of your time to complete and we appreciate all responses. The survey will close on Friday 5 October.
We calculate 16 to 19 revenue funding allocations using a national funding formula. We receive the data to feed into these calculations at set points throughout the year and this largely determines the timelines of the delivery of your funding allocation. We will use your feedback to inform decisions and improvements of our self-service materials. We will report on our findings in the early autumn.