Guidance Coronavirus (COVID-19): financial support for education, early years and children’s social care
Sector-specific guidance
State-funded schools
This includes maintained schools, academy trusts, alternative provision, non-
maintained special schools, state funded boarding schools and school-based
nursery provisions. Maintained nursery schools should refer to the early years
section above.
Mainstream state-funded schools
Local authority maintained schools (including pupil referral units) and
academies (including free schools) will continue to receive their budgets for
the coming year, as usual, regardless of any periods of partial or complete
closure. That will ensure that they are able to continue to pay their staff,
and meet their other regular financial commitments, as we move through these
extraordinary times. We know that schools may face additional costs as a
result of coronavirus (COVID-19). We have put in place additional support to
help schools meet these costs; guidance is
available on this additional funding.
We do not, in general, expect schools to furlough staff. However, we
understand that, in some instances, schools may have a separate private income
stream (for example, catering, sports facilities lettings, or boarding
provision funded by parents in state boarding schools). Where this income has
either stopped or been reduced and there are staff that are typically paid
from those private income streams, it may be appropriate to furlough staff.
Schools should first seek to make the necessary savings from their existing
budget or consider options to redeploy these staff before furloughing them.
Only after all other potential options have been fully considered should
schools furlough those members of staff and seek support through the
Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme.
The following conditions need to be met:

the employee works in an area of business where services are temporarily not required and whose salary is not covered by public funding
the employee would otherwise be made redundant or laid off
• the employee is not involved in delivering provision that has already been funded
(where appropriate) the employee is not required to deliver provision for a child of a critical worker and/or vulnerable child
the grant from the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme would not duplicate other public grants received and would not lead to financial reserves being created

Where these conditions are met, schools should receive a grant from the CJRS
which is in line with the proportion of its paybill which could be considered
to have been funded by a school’s private income.
To illustrate:
If a school’s average monthly private income stream (for example, from parent-
paid school meals) provides 4% of the schools’ overall income, the school
could claim support through the CJRS for up to 4% of its paybill, after
exhausting options to meet costs from existing budgets and redeployment This
would be done by furloughing staff (for example, catering staff) whose usual
salary or combined salaries are linked with the income lost and come to no
greater than 4% of the provider’s total paybill.
Schools are not expected to consider each stream of private income separately
so a school should consider its total income from private sources, as a
proportion of its overall income, and the pay of all the staff it proposes to
furlough, as a proportion of its total paybill.
The DfE is considering appropriate measures to monitor the use of this scheme
in order to detect any duplication of funding, and will be considering
potential options to recover misused public funding as required.
[CJRS]: Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme
  [DfE]: Department for Education