West Berkshire Council has completed a review following a decision by the Schools Forum to return excess funds held by schools to provide support for high needs children.

In July 2024 the Schools Forum voted to return excess money held – which applied only to Government funding and not money raised by or on behalf of schools.

The unspent money – which doesn’t include funding already allocated – will instead be used to provide additional support for pupils with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) or those in Alternative Provision.

West Berkshire Council is already overspent by £9m in this area due to high demand and this continues to grow.

The Council, in servicing the High Needs Block £9M deficit, loses an estimated £360K annually that it might receive in interest; money we could use to deliver services.

Over the summer West Berkshire Council has met with those schools thought to have an excessive amount of unspent and unallocated funding and who wanted to meet with councillors, and senior officers from the Education team.

The purpose of these meetings was to review their finances, understand their concerns and listen to reasons as to why their schools should retain more funding than originally proposed.

As a result of these reviews, only two schools will be required to return some of their funding, one of which will now benefit from two key projects being covered by the Council’s capital funding.

£1.5M will be clawed back from Brookfields School from their £3.8 million reserves, but the Council will now put £600K into an accessibility project, within our Capital programme along with over £800K for new classrooms that can take 20 more children.

There will be a very small amount returned from Curridge school. Discussions are ongoing, but they will still have substantial reserves even after this money is repaid.

A further positive outcome of the meetings with schools is the proposal to hold engagement meetings between the executive and maintained schools twice a year to ensure effective communications going forward.

Each year schools are given a grant from the government to spend on running the school.

Funding should be used during the year for the benefit of pupils, but schools will sometimes carry some forward from year to year to allow for unseen contingencies or for development funds to put towards capital projects. 

In some cases, an excessive amount of funding has been built up and is sitting in school accounts. Since 2015, the amount of funding schools has been keeping without any spending plans has more than tripled from £4m to £13.4m.  

Recognising that there are pupils across the district who need additional support now, 68% of schools agreed that the surplus in government funding held by schools should be returned and redistributed so that it could be put to good use to support children with additional needs.