The Lincolnshire Schools Forum met to discuss several key issues affecting education in the region, including school funding updates, a review of the forum's constitution, and an annual report on early years services. Michelle Anderson, the elected representative for Maintain Secondary Schools, served as temporary chair for the meeting. The forum endorsed the updated constitution and membership, and noted the contents of reports on school funding, early years, and academies.

School Funding Update 2025/26

The forum discussed the school funding update for 2025/26, with Mark Popplewell, Strategic Finance Lead for Children's Services, presenting the report. The report summarised recent funding announcements from the Department for Education (DfE).

National Funding Formula: The national funding formula (NFF) was introduced in 2018/19 to ensure fair and consistent funding across all mainstream schools¹. Lincolnshire is mirroring the NFF, with local factor values within 2.5% of the respective NFF values. Affordability Gap: An affordability gap of £1.897m to fully implement the NFF with a +0.0% Minimum Funding Guarantee (MFG) was addressed through a school block transfer and a downward adjustment of the age-weighted pupil unit values across the primary and secondary sector by 0.361%.

School Block Transfer: The Lincolnshire Schools Forum approved a 0.5% school block transfer to the high needs block² to support a number of high needs initiatives. This amounted to £2.812m, resulting in a downward adjustment of 1.764 overall in the year of RPU funding for 2025/26. Pay Awards: The School Teachers' Review Body (STRB) recommended a 4% pay award for teachers, and support staff were offered a 3.2% pay rise. Schools are expected to cover 1.3% of the pay award costs from their existing budgets, with the remainder to be met by the School Budget Support Grant.

National Insurance Contributions: The government's decision to increase the rate and reduce the threshold at which employer national insurance contributions apply has a significant cost impact on schools budgets. The DfE will provide over £1bn in 2025/26 to support schools with the changes to National Insurance contributions.

Early Years Funding: The Early Years National Teachers Pay Grant (NTPG) is a standalone grant of £40m for 2025/26 to support maintained schools with early years provision and maintained nursery schools with increased costs. Lincolnshire's funding allocation is £0.293m in 2025/26, which will be distributed to eligible schools with nurseries and nursery schools.

Free School Meals: From the 2026/27 academic year, all pupils in households on Universal Credit will be entitled to free school meals.

Pupil Premium: Pupil Premium will continue in the 2025/26 financial year, with funding rates increased by 2.39% compared to 2024/26.

Spending Review: The government outlined its plans in the Spending Review held on 11 June 2025, including transformational funding for SEND reforms and an extension of the statutory override on the Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG) until the end of the 2027/28 financial year.

During the discussion, Martin McKeown, Head Teacher at Lincoln Christ's Hospital School, expressed disappointment with the use of words such as improved productivity and smarter spending, suggesting that schools are frivolous with their monies. Tristan Revell echoed these concerns, stating that the wording around real terms growth and funding growth is misleading because schools have not got more money, they've actually got less money. Michelle Anderson added that she found the words from the Department for Education at best insensitive, at worst offensive, in terms of one percent could be found within my budget through productivity gains and smarter spending because that is what I have been doing for more than 15 years.

Review of the Lincolnshire Schools Forum Constitution and Membership

The forum reviewed and endorsed the updated Lincolnshire Schools Forum Constitution and Membership document, as detailed in Appendix A of the report. The constitution outlines the statutory origins of the forum, its purpose and role, functions, composition, conduct of meetings, voting arrangements, and administration. The membership composition has been reviewed and updated to reflect the current position as of 1 June 2025.

Annual Report - Early Years

Geraldine O'Neill, Sustainability and Development Manager, presented the annual report for early years. The report provided an update on the support provided to the early years and childcare sector in Lincolnshire during 2024/25 and outlined service priorities for the current financial year.

The report highlighted that the dedicated schools grant (DSG) for early years has increased due to the introduction of new entitlements for children from nine months to school age. The centrally retained budget planned for all services in this year is three percent, which is below the threshold of four percent.

The report also detailed the outcomes of work focused on key priority areas, including the introduction of childcare for children of working parents from nine months, the capital funding program to address childcare gaps, and the school-based nurseries program.

During the discussion, Andrew Everard asked if any map or anything to identify those deficiencies in Lincolnshire had been provided in the report. Geraldine O'Neill responded that she can make the detailed annual child care sufficiency assessment report available to the forum when that's ready.

Academies and Trust Update

Mark Popplewell presented the academies and trust update, providing information on the latest number of academies, pupils in academies, and academy trusts in Lincolnshire as of 1 June 2025. Since the last report, one school has converted to academy status. Five schools are currently intending to convert to academy status within the next six months. There are 34 active multi-academy trusts operating within Lincolnshire, with 161 academies being members of multi-academy trusts.

Lincolnshire Schools' Forum Work Programme

The forum discussed potential items for future meetings, including updates on the national funding formula, de-delegation of maintained primary schools budgets, the Section 251 budget statement, and alternative provision arrangements. It was agreed that Rachel Wilson would organise with the officers as to what the members would prefer.