Academy School funding question - secondary appeals

[Parentingfrontline]

Putting this out there in the hope of a steer from the appeal / admissions experts on MN, as am prepping for stage one of our appeal.

The Statement we received from the secondary school we're appealing for (an oversubscribed Academy) says they're already at PAN and they will not receive funding for any additional places awarded via the appeal process.

This surprises me: I understood government funding for academies to be on a per-pupil basis and I imagine there are a significant number of children who join after appeal or move in-year. I can't see how all those "retrospective" places would be unfunded?

Thanks in advance.

I can only answer from a maintained school position - we are funded using the October census numbers, so definitely funded for all students we have in each year group, even if over PAN. The funding is lagged, so Y7 October census we start getting funding for in April 2024, maybe that’s what they are alluding to? I may be wrong though and it’s totally different in terms of academy funding.

Sorry also to add - it might be they’ve just amended a previous statement that was used after October 2022 for in-year appeals and someone has forgotten to remove that information from the statement? As that would be the case for any admissions in that year group post October census.

I haven’t read the DfE guidance on academy school funding agreements - it’s available on line if you care to Google - but I would have assumed any agreement would be tied to or capped at a certain number, as otherwise the DfE would be entering into a potentially open-ended commitment.

Funding for academies is indeed largely on a per-pupil basis. It works exactly the same way as for maintained schools. As @advice222 says, the funding is lagging, so they won't get the additional funding until April, but it is wrong to say they won't get any funding at all.

As has been said, the funding lags by nearly a year, but they will eventually get it.

If they are already in deficit or struggling to balance the books, I can see how it would be a concern for them.

It’s the same for academies as it is for LA maintained. I’m not sure the school argument holds as they are funded based on census data from the previous year, so if they lose pupils from other years they won’t lose funding for them, so it’s swings and roundabouts. Also, what additional costs are there with one extra pupil? They’re not going to have to employ an extra member of staff for one pupil. 80% of schools expenditure is staffing, then there’s building costs like electricity, waste disposal, heating, repairs and maintenance. Your child is not going to make a dent on those costs. Plus, next year they will be included in the numbers so the school will get the funding, and for the year after they’re gone, so they won’t lose out in the long run. A large secondary should be capable of managing their resources sufficiently to account for one extra pupil.

I’m not saying that state schools aren’t underfunded - absolutely they are, but one extra pupil is not going to be the tipping point.

Also, a lot of schools ask parents for voluntary contributions to the “school fund” each year. My daughter’s school ask for £120! The school would be asking you for that even without your child having been included in the funding for that year (though none of the year 7 children joining will have either!) and if you are in a position to pay it then they would benefit from that. But I would be very careful with that argument as you wouldn’t want to appear as though you were trying to buy your way into the school!

My point is that the schools get funding from other sources too. If your child is eligible for free school meals then they would attract more funding than a child who wasn’t.

@Parentingfrontline is it an in-year appeal or an appeal for September? As advice222 said, if you were to take up an in-year place now, in April 2023, the school wouldn't get any additional money until April 2024 (though by then they may have already dropped back to PAN if another student leaves).

SuperSue77 is clutching at straws by referring to voluntary payments. Some schools ask for those but nobody is obliged to give. In any case, voluntary funds aren't always reliable enough to be used for core costs, so are used for optional extras. Our school's voluntary fund is mostly spent on subsidising curriculum-based school trips for students whose parents can't/don't pay voluntary contributions.

The "one extra pupil" argument can seem compelling when it's your child that might be the extra one. It's less compelling for the teachers and other students who will have a higher pupil/teacher ratio and less space and resources. Of course, if it's an oversubscribed school then they are likely to have multiple appeals for year 7 (mine has 18), so that negates the "one extra" argument too, unless your appeal case is stronger than the other umpteen.

Thanks everyone. Helpful insight into how it works, interesting to note the nuances between statement wording and reality. @ridikulo like many others I’m aware how school staffing and resources are stretched beyond limits and how increasingly hard it is for teachers.

How many pupils is the tipping point, though? If it's a Y7 appeal for an oversubscribed school, there could be 10-15 students appealing. That is half a class extra if they were all admitted, and then the school runs into an issue. Either they make existing classes larger, which has difficulties, or they spread the students out over more classes- which is expensive.

Larger class sizes do come with a lot of expenses. E.G. I teach in science labs designed for 32 students, but I now have many classes of 33/4, as do many of my colleagues. We have one class of 36! Therefore, we have to put extra tables in the labs- these are specialist tables as they cannot be porous (this would be a hazard for practical work)- so we have had to buy more tables. They also need specialist lab stools, again we have had to buy extra. Each larger class uses more consumables in practical work too, which costs more.

Our class sets of textbooks are 15 per class. Either students have to share one between 3, or we have to co-ordinate with other teachers to ensure we don't all want textbooks at the same time, in order to have enough. Same with our class sets of bunsen burners, and we have 32 pairs of safety goggles per lab. Obviously, over time, we can increase these, but it does all cost money.

£120 really doesn't go very far in a school. If we buy extra textbooks as singles, they are £20 each, so £120 buys us two extra textbooks for biology/chemistry/physics.