Memoranda submitted by Lesley Adams Head of Integrated Services for Children and Families, Birmingham City Council

 

Dear Anne-Marie

I can only confirm what our proposed arrangements for the deprivation supplement are. Our local consultation on this and the rest of the single formula finished last Friday. We will collate the results of that and report them to our Schools Forum in February but I am not sure that we will make any decisions at that point now that we have a delay to the overall implementation.

Our proposal is to target all pupils identified by IMD from either the top 5% most disadvantaged areas (nationally) or the top 10% or a weighted mixture of the 2, and allocate extra funding.

If we target just the top 5% that will be about 6,557 children and they would attract another 61p per hour on top of the unit rate. If we target the top 10% (9,233) that would be 44p per hour on top. I cannot say what the result would be if we use a weighted mixture but it would obviously lie somewhere between these 2 sums.

We currently use a mixture of these 2 in our main school funding formula.

Over 70% of our under 5s live in the 30% top most disadvantaged areas nationally and we have about 14,000 children in each year group. So our proposal will only target the absolutely most disadvantaged. Context might be important. Other authorities may well be targeting a much wider group than we are suggesting and offering a smaller sum.

I hope that answers the question sufficiently well.

December 2009