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.
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!
National recommendations / statutory requirements to teachers pay scales can sometimes become confusing, that’s why today we’re going to catch you up on all the changes to teachers pay since 2018. On 1 September 2018 changes to the School Teacher’s Pay and Conditions Document (STPCD) came into effect with central government announcing changes to inflationary pay range uplifts for three groups: main pay / unqualified teachers, teachers on the upper pay range and members of the leadership team. In addition to this, the DfE announced a teachers’ pay grant to help support rising costs due to the recommended pay lift. This affected each school differently based on their original budget and a range of other factors.
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.
It can often be a difficult and lengthy process for schools to gain access to new funding. If you’re looking for additional funding for a development project, we can assist you. Using the expert knowledge and experience of our grant finding partner Reach 4 Grants (R4G), we can help you secure funding to suit your needs.
At the beginning of May, the education secretary, Damian Hinds announced that the government will be attempting to give parents a wider choice in finding the right school for their children by delegating funds to expanding grammar and faith schools.
With this, the Selective School Expansion Fund (SSEF) has been created, to allow existing selective schools to apply on the grounds that they prioritise admission to pupil premium children and create an outreach programme with local primary schools.
The pressure is rising for school business managers. With school budgets getting constantly tighter, the last thing you need is long, outdated processes and complex software slowing you down. At SAAF Education, our main aim is to make your school finances simple and efficient, so we try to help out where ever possible.
If you're a school or academy that uses Capita SIMS FMS, then we have put together four of our top tips in a helpful infographic for you; feel free to save or download for future reference.
