CABINET members expect school governors to use the new schools funding formula as a basis to review the salaries they are offering head teachers and school management teams.

This message came out of the Powys council cabinet meeting which unanimously passed a new schools funding formula on Tuesday, January 15.

Next year PCC schools will receive £70,480,215.

Schools will find out exactly how much they will get under the new formula in April. Of the list of 92 schools in Powys, 25 will now see a worse funding settlement.

The formula is supposed to provide the “minimum sustainable core provision” of funding for school pupils.

The council’s Funding Review Group (FRG) believed the formula is £5.5 million short of what should be the budget for the minimum core funding provision.

The council’s officers, after looking at the figures again, made tweaks to bring the gap down to just under £1m.

Jane Thomas, the council’s head of finance, said that part of the gap is down to some schools paying their management teams salaries under the Individual School Range (ISR) rather than those calculated for the formula.

Ms Thomas clarified the issue: “Schools are paying well above the ISR ranges for a number of reasons, school numbers and ranges are falling and so on.

“When we are talking about this gap of funding being £5.5m, what they are referring to is what schools are paying, rather than what the formula delivers in funding.

“It’s not a change from a previous formula to this one – they are both based on the same premise but it’s a difference in cost.

“It’s based on pupil numbers to dictate what level of salary leadership scales would attract, that range sets the level of setting and funding.”

Council leader Cllr Rosemarie Harris asked if this meant that some schools were paying much more than others for leadership costs?

Ms Thomas, added: “Yes – and I think some of that is historical in that they have not addressed a change in their ISR and restructured the leadership team accordingly.

“The actual gap from one formula to the other was actually £20,000 which is a significant difference to what schools are paying mainly in the secondary sector.”

Education portfolio holder, Cllr Myfanwy Alexander, (Independent, Banwy) said: “There’s no intention in this formula to prevent governors rewarding success.

“Unfortunately we don’t see a read across between high spending and success.

“There will be leaders who had their salary set when there was an additional 150 to 200 pupils at the school.

“It means there is a mismatch between the costs of management and the tasks of management.

“And I recommend that all governors should do staff reviews of their leadership teams on a regular basis – looking at the role that actually exists and not one that was there five years ago but what is there on the ground.

“If this is done regularly it helps school governors understand what tasks are being asked of senior managers and makes the task of performance management of that head much simpler.

“If you are paying a head considerably over the odds you should ask at performance what that person is doing to justify.”

Cllr Alexander added: “That may mean at times having difficult discussions about staffing structures but these are discussions that we have to have if schools are to live within their means.”

If school governors do decide to look at their management teams’ costs, and make changes, salaries would be protected for a time.