The children and young people’s directorate oversees 69 primary schools, 12 secondary schools, 3 special schools and a dedicated nursery school. Total budgets for 2010-11 for these sectors were as follows:
Primary and nursery schools £60.5m
Secondary schools: £61.8m
Special schools: £4.9m
Warrington schools are funded primarily via the Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG) received from the Department for Education (DfE). This is a ring-fenced grant allocated to fund all aspects relating to schools expenditure within the Authority.
This totals approx. £125 m in 2010-11, and £111m of this was used to support the maintained schools sector. The children and young people’s directorate, alongside the Schools Forum, is the accountable body to ensure the above funds are used both effectively and efficiently.
The Finance Team manages, coordinates and supports a number of workstreams to ensure the above is delivered, including:
- Calculating the Individual Schools Delegated Budgets via the specific local formulae
- Providing finance support to the Schools Forum
- Administration of external grant funding streams
- Coordination of governor training
- Providing budgetary and financial systems support to individual schools
- Supporting schools to improve financial management, primarily by achieving the Financial Management Standard in Schools (FMSiS) – and the successor arrangements TBC
Should you wish to discuss any of the above further and/or require any additional information, please contact Garry Bradbury, Senior Accountant (Schools), Children & Young People’s Accountancy, Quattro, Buttermarket St, Warrington WA1 2QB (Tel: 01925 442976) or e-mail gbradbury@warrington.gov.uk
At the close of each financial year (April to March), the Local Authority is statutorily required to report on schools expenditure via the section 251 outturn statement. The statement for 2009-10 may be found below.
Similarly, budgets set for 2010-11 are described by the section 251 budget statement (see link below)
On a per capita basis, Warrington BC’s DSG funding has traditionally fallen in the lowest 25% of education funding, and has been a vocal member of the f40 group, which presses for fairer funding arrangements nationally.
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