November 2021
Dear Colleagues,
Welcome to the Schools Finance November Bulletin.
1. School Finance Team
As you may be aware Rubina Kudhail has now left the local authority to start a new role at the London Borough of Ealing. We have appointed a permanent replacement who is due to start later in November. For the interim period, Charmaine Lawrence joins us with significant experience working as a School Business Manager in various schools. If you have any urgent queries and cannot contact us directly, please send them to schoolfinancereturns@hillingdon.gov.uk where a member of the Schools Finance Team will be able to pick them up.
2. PE and Sports Grant
The Primary PE and Sport Grant 2021 to 2022 must be spent in full by the end of the 2021 to 2022 academic year. This includes any carried forward unspent funding that has resulted from the relaxations to the ring-fencing arrangements of the PE and sport premium because of the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak. Schools must use the funding to make additional and sustainable improvements to the provision of PE, physical activity, and sport for the benefit of all primary-aged pupils to encourage the development of healthy, active lifestyles.
The following examples of expenditure are not considered as falling within the scope of additional or sustainable improvement:
- employing coaches or specialist teachers to cover planning preparation and assessment (PPA) arrangements - these should come out of schools' core staffing budgets
- teaching the minimum requirements of your existing PE curriculum
- funding capital expenditure
Maintained schools must publish information about their use of the premium on their website by the end of the summer term or 31 July at the latest.
3. Teacher Pay and Pension Grant
The DfE have now published that they will continue to provide maintained nursery schools, school nurseries, sixth forms, 16 to 19 schools with the allocations for the Teacher Pay and Pension Grant for September 2021 to March 2022. These will be paid out to the schools in the December cash advance. This additional funding will be rolled into the DSG allocations for 2022/23 and will be distributed through the schools funding formula. This grant should be allocated by adding to the Teaching Staff expenditure budgets.
4. School Teachers' Pay and Conditions Document 2021 (ST PCD)
Teachers' Pay Award - Summary of changes from 01 September 2021
- A consolidated award of £250 is awarded to all teachers whose full-time equivalent basic earnings are less than:
- £27,419 in Outer London (Unqualified 1,2 & 3)
- Any part-time teacher whose full-time equivalent basic earnings meet the eligibility criteria receive the award on a pro-rata basis according to their working hours.
- The award should be paid to all eligible teachers, whether located on a published pay point or not and should be independent of any progression considerations.
- The pay uplift will be back dated to 1 September 2021.
- An advisory pay point structure for unqualified teacher pay range (UTPR) is introduced
- The treatment of teachers between existing published pay points, including the management of possible "leapfrogging", will be at the discretion of the relevant body which should ensure that no teachers located just above the pay thresholds for eligibility are significantly disadvantaged relative to other teachers.
5. School Funding Consultation
Schools were recently emailed documents relating to the funding consultations for the financial year 2022/23. These include proposals as follows:
- The transfer of 0.5% from Schools Block to address pressures in other areas of the Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG)
- Changes to the 3% threshold mechanism
The deadline for responses has been extended and will now remain open until 21st November 2021.
There will be a further short consultation which will be circulated this week asking for views on the transition to the National Funding Formula from April 2022.
6. SFVS 2021/22
The Schools Financial Value Standard (SFVS Checklist) 2021/22 is now available for completion. The SFVS has been updated this year as a word checklist instead of an Excel spreadsheet. There are 30 questions in total divided up into 6 Sections with two new questions added this year.
- One is in relation to related party transactions where a new Excel template is completed. (please see attached)
- The other is in relation to the number of employees (if any) whose gross salary exceeds £100k.
Please see attached a Schools Finance SFVS Guidance document which provides an overview of the changes implemented this year. There are further DfE documents available which provide clarification on each question as well good practice and details of further support.
Please plan to allow some extra time for completion and ratification by your Governing Bodies by the deadline date. The checklist should be forwarded to your link officer or schoolfinancereturns@hillingdon.gov.uk by 31st March 2022, early submissions are welcome.
7. VAT (Reminder)
Please note, as announced at Budget 2021, the government has extended the reduced rate for tourism and hospitality. This is effective as follows:
- The new 12.5% VAT Rate is applicable from 1 October 2021 to 31 March 2022
- The old 5% VAT Rate was effective until 30 September 2021 The supplies to which the temporary reduced rates will apply remain the same.
As HMRC have recently completed a Business Risk Review of VAT. This has prompted the local authority VAT Team to request that we remind schools of the following:
- A VAT invoice issued by a supplier is a legal document that should not be altered by anyone other than the Supplier who issued the invoice in the first place.
- If you think the supplier has under calculated the VAT, you should only recover VAT shown on the tax invoice, not a greater amount, even if you have paid the higher value. You should contact the supplier that has made an error in the calculation of this VAT and ask them to issue a credit note and re-invoice as appropriate.
- If you think the supplier has charged too much VAT, the wrong (increased VAT) value should not be claimed. The supplier should be contacted to raise a credit note or correct the invoice as necessary.
- It is common to split a single invoice line across a number of cost centre codes, but you should ensure that the correct amount of VAT is recovered. You will need to be careful that rounding does not increase the VAT recovered.
- If multiple lines are being entered into the Finance system, make sure that each line is coded to the correct VAT Code and the combined total agrees to the invoiced VAT.
8. School Finance Team Bitesize Sessions
Over the coming months we will be delivering 'Bitesize Sessions' via Microsoft Teams covering several finance topics such as Year End, Staff Remuneration returns, Lease returns, etc. This month we will be focusing on SFVS and will be holding sessions on the following dates:
- Tuesday 23rd November 10.00am
- Thursday25th November2.30pm
Each session should last no more than one hour including Q&As. Bookings for your chosen sessions should be confirmed by email to schoolfinancereturns@hillingdon.gov.uk by Friday 19th November 2021. Once registered, you will receive an email confirmation incorporating your Teams invite. There will be an opportunity to ask questions as well as using the 'Chat facility' on Teams so the use of a laptop or desktop PC that is equipped with a microphone is preferential.
9. What Schools must Publish Online
The Department of Education guidance on what must be published online has been updated 12th February 2021 to include details on Remote education. You must publish information about your school's remote education provision on your website. An optional template is available to support schools with this requirement.
School must continue to publish expectations around the ring-fenced grants including COVID- 19 catch-up premium, School-led Tutoring, Pupil Premium incorporating Recovery Premium and the PE & Sports Grant.
Details can be found here: What Schools must publish online
10. Attachments
Schools_financial_value_standard__SFVS__checklist_2021-22 [54KB]
Template_for_recording_related_party_transactions__RPTs_ [24KB]
11. Other Contacts
Please access ALL education information and weekly updates from the Education Improvement & Partnerships Team via here: LEAP
The Schools Finance Team policies, guidance and documents can be accessed on the link here: Finance - Leap
SBS Helpline and email
SBS provides a helpline to schools for technical questions:
Telephone: 0345 222 1551 option 8
Email: sbsonline@schoolbusinessservices.co.uk
New SEN Portal - ContrOCC
The Provider Portal - ContrOCC system has gone live from 1st September. All SEN payments and pupil statements will be accessible via the ContrOCC portal.
Any SEN funding queries, please email SENfinance@hillingdon.gov.uk
If you have any queries regarding the portal system, please contact the following email address: paymentscarefirst@hillingdon.gov.uk
Please continue to contact your link officer for finance queries.
Kind Regards
Schools FinanceTeam
