What is the Supplementary Fund?
Benchmarking can be a valuable process as it enables comparisons of income and expenditure with other schools. 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.
Every four years, the Government’s actuary department performs a valuation of all public service pension schemes, including the Teachers’ Pension Scheme (TPS). The rationale of the valuation is to assess the cost of pensions being provided to members of each scheme and to establish suitable employer and employee contribution rates.
Growing your trust can be a difficult and expensive process, but now you have a great opportunity, the Department for Education has just announced a new funding pot of £17m called the Trust Capacity Fund (TCaF) which supports trust growth and development across the country. If you’re in search of funding to expand your trust, TCaF can support your plans. The application process for this funding is now open and will close on 31 December 2019.
Central government has announced they will be allotting additional funding of over £14bn to primary and secondary education between now and 2022-23. The funding package will include £2.6bn for 2020-21, £4.8bn for 2021-2022, and a further £7.1bn for 2022-2023. They have also announced an additional £1.5bn per annum to support additional pension costs. This will bring the schools budget to circa £52.2bn by 2022-2023.
Financial auditing can be an incredibly stressful process, but with the right guidance and preparation it can be an easy, efficient and stress-free process. SAAF have been completing internal audits and external audit preparation support for academies and MAT’s for over 7 years, so we thought it was time to share our expertise!
On Thursday 27th June, School Minister Lord Agnew issued the new Academies Financial Handbook which will come into force 1 September 2019.
The biggest change to the handbook is the introduction of a new requirement for academy trusts to show how they check their internal systems, ensuring they are effective and compliant through an independently prepared annual report which will be submitted to the Education Skills Funding Agency (ESFA).
The auditing process can be a time consuming and daunting task; you may not look forward to an external company rifling through your paperwork and potentially highlighting issues with your processes. However, audits are an essential financial management tool to ensure your school, academy or MAT is running as effectively as possible and should be encouraged and embraced.
