ESFA Update: academies 6 February 2019
Published 6 February 2019
Applies to England
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1. Action: academies admissions arrangements
Academies must have determined their admissions arrangements for entry in September 2020 by Thursday 28 February 2019. They must publish their admissions arrangements on their website and send a copy to their local authority by 15 March 2019.
Academies must also publish their timetables for organising and hearing admission appeals on their websites by Thursday 28 February 2019.
Please follow the statutory requirements in both the school admissions code and the school admission appeals code when determining admissions arrangements and organising admission appeals.
The school workforce census is a statutory data collection. You have a legal obligation to submit a return. You can see what you must provide by law.
2. Information: academy general annual grant funding (GAG) allocations for 2019 to 2020 academic year
We will begin issuing 2019 to 2020 GAG allocation statements towards the end of February 2019. We expect to issue all allocation statements to academies that opened before or on 1 January 2019 by the end of March 2019.
For academies with sixth forms, the detail of your 16 to 19 allocation will, as usual, be set out in your separate 16 to 19 allocation statement.
We will issue allocations for 2019 to 2020 to February and March 2019 opening academies by mid-April 2019.
We will upload allocation statements to the ‘revenue funding’ folder (2019 to 2020) in the Document Exchange section of Information Exchange. We encourage you to check your access to Document Exchange so that you are able to view your statement as soon as it becomes available. For guidance about Information Exchange, please visit our support page.
We have published a range of information about academy revenue funding allocations and 16 to 19 funding allocations.
3. Information: 16 to 19 school and academy sixth form 2019 to 2020 allocation calculation toolkits
We have uploaded 16 to 19 school and academy sixth form 2019 to 2020 allocation calculation toolkits (ACT) for most institutions to ESFA Information Exchange.
You will find your ACT file in the Document Exchange ‘Revenue Funding’ folder, under ‘AY 2019 to 2020 (2019 to 2020)’. Our guidance will help you understand the information.
Your ACT shows how we have used your data to calculate your funding factors, band proportions, students not meeting the condition of funding and students eligible for CDF Industry placement funding for your 2019 to 2020 allocation. For most schools and academies, ACT also includes lagged student data. Further funding information will be shown on your allocation statement.
Please do not submit a business case about your data until you have reviewed your 16 to 19 revenue funding allocation statement. The deadline for business cases is Tuesday 30 April 2019.
Please contact us using our online enquiry form if you have any questions.
4. Information: publication of evidence to support the School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB) consideration of the 2019 pay award
The Secretary of State wrote to the STRB on 21 November, asking for their recommendations on the September 2019 teachers pay award. The letter stressed the importance of focusing on how the pay award can best address recruitment and retention challenges, while taking account of affordability across the school system.
The Department for Education has now published evidence to support STRB’s consideration of the 2019 pay award.
The evidence looked carefully at the affordability of any pay rise, and concludes that a pay increase for teachers of 2%, in line with forecast inflation, is affordable within the overall funding available to schools for 2019 to 2020, without placing further pressure on school budgets. This is supported by the government’s proposals to fund increases in teachers’ pension contributions from September 2019.
Schools will be receiving their individual budget allocations for 2019 to 2020 in February or March 2019, and when budget planning, should set aside funding to cover the pay award.