On the page below you will find the the 2017-18 Budget Commentary and the various tools provided to aid in your budget planning for 2017-18 and beyond. This is a change to previous years. Firstly, budgets have been issued (as requested by schools) earlier to aid planning and giving schools more time in order to get the budgets ‘signed off’. Publishing the budgets in this way has enabled the earlier ‘release date’. Secondly schools will need to open the various tools (shown below), select your school from the drop down menus (in school number order however PRUs, Special Schools and Highfield Nursery are shown at the foot of the list) and save a copy to where you would normally save your toolkits etc. Please note that toolkits will not be made available through AVCO/Anycomms as in previous years.
| Action | Deadline |
| 2017-18 Budget Plan approved by Governors 2017-18 one-year Budget Plan must be approved by Governors | 31 March 2017 |
| 2017-18 Budget Toolkit with the LA 2017-18 Budget Toolkit (containing the one-year budget) must be with the LA Submit via AVCO | 28 April 2017 |
| 2-Year (2018-19 & 2019-20) Toolkit with the LA 2-Year budget plan must be with the LA – must be signed off by Governors Submit via AVCO | 31 May 2017 |
1. Budget Toolkit: The toolkit will contain your delegated budget information split out by the blocks of funding – Schools, Early Years and High Needs. Within the toolkit there will be the Budget Plan tab and also feeding off of this, the 3 year Strategic Plan. The toolkit remains the same as 2016-17.Further guidance is included in the toolkit. Any federation school toolkits will be sent on to those schools separately.
2. Minimum Funding Guarantee (MFG) Tool: This will assist in explaining the MFG / capping calculation for your school. This tool does not apply to PRUs or Special Schools.
3. Budget Estimate Tool: This is to aid in any further planning / modelling that schools may wish to undertake in supporting 1 year and strategic planning submissions. Further guidance is included in the tool. Schools can choose to use this, however there are likely to be more significant changes under the National Funding Formula (NFF) once stage 2 of the consultation is completed and next steps are shared with the LA later on in the year.
We appreciate that longer term strategic planning will prove difficult with the uncertainties around NFF, however we do know that the factors used will broadly be in line with current factors and protection and capping will continue to reduce significant turbulence.
Please click on the following link for Schools Block NFF which will take you the Schools National Funding Formula -stage 2 page.
The document on the following link is useful highlighting what the new NFF might mean for your school: Impact of the proposed schools NFF 2016.
High Needs Funding Consultation
If you have any queries at all, please contact the Schools Accountancy Team on the usual details.
You can also contact the Schools’ Choice Finance Helpline on – 0345 6037 684