Synopsis
School funding reforms have made financial planning challenging. A multi-year budget helps to achieve financial sustainability, but without multi-year allocations, how do you know your plans are affordable?
'Forecasting Your School's Funding' is more than a book; it's a step-by-step toolkit for building high-level funding scenarios over three years. It also provides an analysis of the school funding reforms and other influencing factors to help you develop robust assumptions for the model, which culminates in a Financial Sustainability Plan.
Suitable for any school leader wanting to achieve a meaningful budget plan, this book will help you respond strategically to changing circumstances and achieve greater control in a time of uncertainty.
'I found this guidance very insightful. Whilst allowing various multi-year budget allocations to be calculated with confidence, the background information also allowed me to gain detailed knowledge of the various complexities around school funding.'
- Chief Financial Officer of a three-school Multi-Academy Trust.
'While working through this book and building a model to forecast our school funding, I learned a great deal about the recent changes to school funding as well as possible future trends which we will need to consider. I found the introductory sections to be inspirational and they demonstrated to me the importance of completing the forecasting exercise. I found the building of the model to be integral to my understanding of the process, as it gave me a clear understanding of the thinking behind it and ensures that the person who creates it will understand how to update it in the future as new information becomes available. The model has provided us with three potential scenarios which we will use during our next Finance Committee meeting when discussing the upcoming budget-setting cycle. We can have more meaningful discussions about other possible scenarios and develop plans for the middle and best case as well.'
- Lee Comstock, School Business Manager LA Foundation Primary School.
'This book offers a step by step guide to forecasting schools funding enabling the production of a number of scenarios to take to senior leaders, governing bodies and funding bodies. It takes the guess work out of future planning. What I have learned from this book is the ability to take control and understand, more fully, what the future funding potential could be and also to have confidence in the figures.'
- Alison Caplin, Bursar and Senior Administration Manager, LA maintained secondary school.
About the Author
Education Funding Specialist I'm a qualified accountant and independent consultant specialising in school funding and education finance, with over 35 years experience in local authority education work, including 10 years as an Assistant Director. Between 2007 and 2015 I was a member of the DfE's advisory group on school funding. I advise schools and local authorities on school funding and achieving value for money in order to support better outcomes and enable children and young people to maximise their potential, something I'm passionate about. Everyone deserves the best possible education and we all need to use taxpayers' money wisely, to achieve a fair chance for every single pupil.
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