Financial benchmarking can be a valuable process as it enables comparisons of income and expenditure with other schools and academies. With this comparison you will then be able to consider how your resources can be used more efficiently and identify areas of improvement that may be required.
Benchmarking is a requirement for the School Financial Value Standard (SFVS) that all maintained school governors need to complete and the School Resource Management Self Assessment Tool (SRMSAT) for academies, MATs or free schools.
Benchmarking allows you to understand your position and identify areas of strengths & areas to improve.
Areas of expenditure to consider may be:
IMPORTANT NOTE: Benchmarking is only a guide and if you find yourself at the end of the spectrum, lower or higher than other establishments; you should consider the reasons for this.
Are there special circumstances that would explain your school appearing in the upper or lower quartile? This should be taken into account when comparing to similar educational establishments.
When selecting who to compare your data with, you should keep in mind characteristics such as: area, school size and percentage of pupil premium children.
For effective benchmarking it is best to compare yourself with educational establishments whose characteristics are similar. They do not need to be ‘identical’ in order to produce a good comparison.
When evaluating your results, it is best to ask yourself a number of questions such as:
Asking yourself questions like these will help you analyse your data more effectively.
Once you have collected and analysed your data, it is best to start planning for the next financial year and how you will tackle the changes and implement any improvements. When doing this you should consider:
Remember, the benchmarking comparison will not explain why your establishment has higher or lower expenditure than your comparative establishments, it is to review the differences and identify the reasons for them. Once you have identified the factors that led to the variance from similar schools, you can then discuss and evaluate how resources can be managed more effectively in the future.
If there are any areas where you cannot give a reason for the spending variances in comparison to similar schools, then realistic goals should be made to review spend and make changes.
Don’t worry if you have completed your SFVS or SRMSAT form already. It is an acceptable response to the benchmarking question to explain that you will complete the benchmarking before the end of the financial year and present it to governors after that.
The following questions are included in the SFVS or SRMSAT which relate to benchmarking:
You can access the data here: https://schools-financial-benchmarking.service.gov.uk/
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