1. Somerset Schools Forum 6 October 2016 Education Services Grant (ESG)
Ken Rushton
Service Manager - School Finance

2. ESG - Background
ESG is paid to local authorities (LAs) and academies on a per pupil basis as an un-ringfenced grant.
The purpose of the grant is to enable local authorities and academies to fund their schools’ services.
Allocations are made as follows:
Retained duties rate; this allocation is to meet the obligations that LAs have to fulfil to both academies and maintained schools. It is paid to LAs for every pupil, currently £15 per pupil.
General funding rate; paid to LAs for pupils in maintained schools and direct to academies for their pupils Currently £77 per pupil.

3. National Changes
In the 2015 Spending Review, the DfE announced a saving of £600 million from the ESG by 2019 to 2020.
Local authorities will receive transitional ESG funding from April 2017 to August 2017.
The general funding rate will then be removed from September 2017 and this equates to £1.77m part year or £3m per annum for the LA.
Some academies will have protection, depending on when they converted and how much ESG they received upon conversion. This would remove approximately £2.4m from Academy budgets when the transitional protection ceases.

4. General Funding Grant
LA services currently funded by ESG general funding:
HR duties
Finance duties
Health and Safety
Equality
Religious Education (SACRE)
School Premises
Redundancy costs
Monitoring national curriculum assessment