This has been a busy month for DfE already, including new guidance and consultations in the following areas:
Admissions
- guidance for admissions to free schools;
- guidance for the admission of summer-born children to maintained schools;
- guidance for admission authorities managing the admission of previously looked-after children, as set out in the School Admissions Code; and
- information and data on free schools applications per place for September 2014.
Governors
- Governors’ Handbook 2014; and
- new statutory guidance setting out the arrangements for the constitution of school governing bodies.
SEN and medical conditions
- Statistics on SEN as at January 2013, including England information on primary type of need by age, gender, ethnicity, free school meal eligibility, national curriculum year group, first language and also information on secondary type of need; and
- proposed text for guidance that will be issued under section 100 of the Children and Families Act 2014 (duty to make arrangements for pupils with medical conditions, which comes into force on 1 September).
School transport:
- consultation until 3 June on new home-school transport guidance, which is intended to reduce prescription and allow greater freedoms for local authorities to develop transport policies that meet the needs of their areas.
Maintained schools causing concern
- statutory guidance for local authorities when dealing with any maintained schools causing concern.
Schools funding
- initial application guidelines for a second phase of the Priority School Building Programme, valued at around £2 billion, and due to run from 2015-2021;
- Capital allocations for 2014-15, covering capital maintenance and devolved formula capital (DFC) allocations;
- statutory guidance for schools and local authorities on what happens to a surplus or deficit balance when converting to academy status.
- consultation until 2 June on proposals for converting non-recoupment academies to recoupment academies from the financial year ending 2016, which is intended to simplify the administration of academies funding; and
- consultation until 19 June on how to implement reductions to the Education Services Grant by around £200 in 2015-16, as announced in the 2013 Spending Review.
Rachel Kamm, 11KBW