supplementary budget

The first supplementary budget is only the allocation of a small sum of money received as a Barnet consequential, with only a very minor 0.3% change from the original budget.

I want to discuss three issues:

Firstly the pupil deprivation grant and general education funding

How the pupil deprivation grant is calculated is straight forward

Multiplying the number of pupils entitled to free school meals by the grant per pupil

The Welsh government have a policy of increasing the amount of money given to schools by 1% per year

Confusion arises over whether that is

An absolute 1% increase

A 1% increase over the total Welsh block grant which I believe to be the case

Should Pupil Deprivation grant count against the 1%

I do not believe it should but we need clarity

I also believe SEG should count but should any of it top sliced by the consortium count

Again I think the answers are

Yes it counts

Top sliced money should not count

But again clarity is needed

I believe that it would be helpful when future budgets are presented that the Total school budget and the pupil deprivation grant are published separately.

On Capital projects that involve a future revenue commitment is important that the implications for future budgets are identified.

Invest to save is an excellent idea and I strongly support its aims. I believe an annual report indicating the pay back from each project would be a useful piece of information

Whilst we know that schemes should pay back over 3 years we also know some have needed longer.

It is also inevitable some will not make the expected savings.

It is important that what occurs is scrutinised and that the successes are built upon  and the relative failures learnt from