Director's Message - 21th April 2020

Dear Colleagues,

Please find three additional DfE guidance updates below:

1. FSM

The government has temporarily extended the FSM entitlement to certain families with no recourse to public funds (NRPF). This is new guidance and compliments the FSM guidance. The guidance sets out the eligible groups and savings threshold. This extension is temporarily in place due to the current unique circumstances. It covers both children who are attending school and children who are at home.

Please access the new guidance here. 

The FSM guidance also clarifies paying food suppliers and confirms that you can use your own local voucher scheme if the national scheme is not working for you. Schools will be able to claim back £15 per pupil per week directly from the DfE.

2. Reducing the data burden on education and care settings

Please see the cancelling or pausing data collections guidance to review the new requirements. Some data collection will still take place. 

3. Furloughing school staff 

There has been an update to the DfE guidance here which now indicates that there may be some instances where it is applicable for schools to furlough staff that are funded through private income streams. The guidance indicates that schools should first seek to make the necessary savings from their existing budget or consider options to redeploy these staff before furloughing them. Only after all other potential options have been fully considered, can schools furlough these staff.  Schools would only be able to furlough the proportion of its paybill which could be considered to have been funded by a school's private income. There is an example of how this should be calculated within the updated  guidance, but please contact the Schools Finance team if you have questions or need to discuss further.

Regards,

Dan