The Financing of Maintained Schools (England) Regulations 2001

Explanatory Note

(This note is not part of the Regulations)

These Regulations prescribe the expenditure which makes up the local education authority’s “local schools budget” for the financial year beginning on 1st April 2001.

These Regulations specify the nature of the planned expenditure which a local education authority may deduct from their local schools budget in order to arrive at their “individual schools budget” for that financial year.

An authority’s individual schools budget is to be divided between the schools which they maintain in the form of budget shares for each school. These Regulations provide the basis on which a local education authority may determine the amount from their individual schools budget to be allocated to each school as its budget share for that financial year.

These Regulations require a local education authority to deal in a scheme prepared by them with specified matters connected with the financing of schools which they maintain.

The main changes from the Financing of Maintained Schools (England) Regulations 2000 (“the 2000 Regulations”) are as follows:

Expenditure on the payment of allowances under section 518 of the Education Act 1996 to pupils over compulsory school age, which is offset by grant from the Secretary of State, is excluded from an authority’s local schools budget (regulation 4(g)).

The provisions that were in regulation 11(10) of the 2000 Regulations about provisions in the authority’s formula for a 2.5% increase in the amount per pupil determined under the preceding year’s regulations are modified. Regulation 11(7) of these Regulations now provides that the increase is to be an average amount taken over each of three categories i.e. key stages 1 and 2, key stages 3 and 4 and above compulsory school age.

Regulation 9(2) sets out the circumstances in which an authority are not required to consult on proposed changes to the factors or criteria which they use in their allocation formula. These are essentially circumstances where the Regulations leave the authority with no discretion as to the particular factor or criteria involved.

Regulation 20(4) provides that if there is a net increase during the financial year in a school’s adjusted budget share (used to calculate the amount of transitional funding under regulation 20) because of a change in the number of pupils with statements of special educational needs, or changes in the needs of such pupils, then the amount of the school’s transitional funding is not affected.

Additional provisions regarding the redetermination of budget shares to take into account certain matters relating to preceding financial years are set out in regulations 23, 24 and 25.

Part IV contains provisions about additional amounts, determined by reference to the primary, secondary and special schools maintained by the authority, to be added to the budget shares determined under Part III.

Part V contains a specific provision about the correction of errors during the financial year.

The main changes in Schedule 1, which refers to the expenditure which may be deducted from a local education authority’s local school’s budget, are as follows:

Paragraph 11 is expanded to include arrangements made with a view to avoiding or resolving disagreements with the parents of children with special educational needs.

A new paragraph 27(c) is added to cover expenditure on “Best Value” functions under the Local Government Act 1999 (c. 27) incurred in connection with the authority’s functions in relation to the provision of primary and secondary education.

Paragraph 27(p) has been expanded to refer specifically to the retention of funding to meet costs incurred in monitoring schools' performance of health and safety duties.

Paragraph 31 has been modified to permit local education authorities to retain funding centrally to finance “emergency” payments to individual schools facing costs which they cannot reasonably be expected to meet from their delegated budgets. The requirement that they should always be unforeseeable items of expenditure has been relaxed.