Guidance

Dedicated schools grant (DSG) assurance statement and note to the accounts: guidance for completing the digital forms

Published 9 January 2025

Applies to England

The Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) closed on 31 March 2025. All activity has moved to the Department for Education (DfE). You should continue to follow this guidance.

1. Introduction

Local authorities must complete both of the following digital forms for: 

• the dedicated schools grant (DSG) assurance statement for the actual deployment of the 2023 to 2024 DSG, details of any fraud cases reported and recovered and numbers of schools subject to financial intervention by your local authority 

• the note to the accounts figures for the 2023 to 2024 financial year  

Before submitting each digital form, chief finance officers (CFOs) must be satisfied that the DSG has been used fully in support of the schools budget.  Local authorities do not need to include information about expenditure funded via other sources, such as Department for Education (DfE) grants, on their assurance statements. 

Whilst completing the assurance statement, CFOs should refer, if necessary, to the DSG: conditions of grant 2023 to 2024. 

If required, DfE will contact local authorities to follow up any discrepancies highlighted during our scrutiny of the assurance statement and note to the accounts.

2. Who is this guide for?

This guide is for local authorities. 

It provides instructions for completing your return. If you require further help completing your assurance statement, note to the accounts or have any queries, you can email us at LA.ASSURANCE@education.gov.uk.

3. When to complete your submission 

The deadline for submitting the 2023 to 2024 autumn term DSG assurance statement and note to the accounts is 5pm on Friday, 7 February 2025. You can change and resubmit your return up until this time.

4. Accessing the forms 

Please read the sections below before accessing the DSG autumn 2023 to 2024 assurance digital portal and completing your submission.

4.1 Before you start  

This service is for local authorities.

To access the form you need to have an active DfE Sign-in account that is linked to your local authority.  If you have not used DfE Sign-in before you will need to create an account.

4.2 DfE Sign-in

Sign in to your DfE Sign-in account

Follow the below steps to access the form via your DfE Sign-in account:

1. Access the online form and when prompted, enter your DfE Sign-in credentials (your username and password) for authentication.

2. Choose the organisation that you are completing the form for – this is only required if your account is linked to several organisations.

3. The next page will display the details we hold about the organisation you selected when you signed in. This will show the name, address and unique identifier of the local authority, as well as the name and email address of the person who signed into DfE Sign-in.

4. If these details are correct, select ‘Continue’ to go to the next page.

5. If you believe these details are incorrect, contact us via the Customer Help Portal and we will investigate. You can still proceed with your submission.

Your account must be connected to the local authority you are completing the form for. You do not need to add any services in DfE sign-in, it is used only for authentication.

If you do not have a DfE Sign-in account 

You will need to create one by following steps 1 to 5 below: 

1. Select ‘create a DfE Sign-in account’ on the DfE Sign-in page.

2. Enter your name and email address (use a valid business email address that contains your name).

3. We will send you an email to verify your email address; copy the code from this email and paste it into the box on the verification page.

4. Create a memorable password that must be at least 14 characters. A good way to create a secure and memorable password is to use 3 random words. You can use numbers, symbols and spaces.

5. Sign in using your new credentials, and request access to the organisation for which you would like to submit the form.

Adding an organisation to your DfE Sign-in account

To add a new organisation to your account, follow the steps below:

1. Login to your DfE Sign-in account.

2. Select ‘Organisations’.

3. Select ‘Request access to an organisation’.

4. Enter the URN or UKPRN of the organisation you like to add.

5. Select the organisation from search results.

6. Enter comments for the approver and select ‘Confirm’.

Your request will be sent to the approver of that organisation.

An approver is someone at your organisation responsible for controlling who has access to DfE Sign-in and the services within the system. It is usually an administrator or a senior manager.

For security reasons, you will need the authorisation of one of your organisation’s approvers before you can access the form.

Once your request to access an organisation has been approved, you can follow the steps outlined under the ‘Sign in to your DfE Sign-in account’ section to complete the form.

4.3  If you need further assistance

For problems using the DfE Sign-in service, use our DfE Sign-in help service to request assistance. When raising a support request, select ‘other’.

If you encounter problems accessing the form, use our Customer Help Portal.

5.  Completing the forms 

When authenticated through DfE Sign-in, you will find a portal with a list of forms to complete as below: 

• DSG autumn assurance
• DSG note to the accounts

You must submit all the relevant forms to complete your return. When you select a form from the portal, you will find a ‘save and continue’ button that will take you through each page of the form. If you sign out of the form, or leave your form opened for an extended period before submitting it, you can resume your submission when you sign back in and the digital portal will record the status of your form completion accordingly.

Once you have submitted the form, you will be advised of next steps and will receive an email confirmation of your submission with a link to download a PDF copy of your submission. This link will expire after 6 months so you should download a copy as soon as possible.

You must submit all the relevant forms to complete your return. The digital portal will record the status of your form submissions; you can edit and resubmit your forms until the submission deadline.

Further details on how to complete each form are outlined below.

5.1  Your details

This page will display the details we hold about the organisation you selected when you signed into your DfE Sign-in account. 

5.2 Outturn 2023 to 2024 DSG deployment

This page will ask if the DSG received by your local authority for 2023 to 2024 was fully deployed in support of the schools budget in accordance with the conditions of grant and School and Early Years Finance (England) Regulations 2024.

5.3 Audited note to the accounts 

This page will ask if your note to the accounts have been audited or not. You will then be presented with a series of questions relating to your audit status.  

If your accounts have been audited, you will be asked if the audited note has been published or not and, where published, you will need to provide the link. You will also need information on any adverse statements on the audited accounts relating specifically to the schools’ budget, regarding regularity or propriety.  

If your accounts have not yet been audited, you will be asked if the draft note to the accounts has been published or not and, where published, you will need to provide the link.

5.4 Fraud cases

This section will ask you to report on any fraud cases which have taken place during the 2023 to 2024 financial year and in previous years.

Fraud is defined as an intentional false representation, including failure to declare information or abuse of position that is carried out to make gain, cause loss or expose another to the risk of loss.

This includes cases where management authorised action has been taken, including, but not limited to, disciplinary action, civil action or criminal prosecution.

You can read further information on the common areas of spend: fraud, error and debt in the Cabinet Office guidance.

If your local authority has not identified any instances of fraud in schools you maintain, or funded early years providers, during the 2023 to 2024 financial year, select ‘no’ to continue with your submission.

When reporting fraud, you need to include the number of fraud cases and their total value during the 2023 to 2024 financial year. You will be asked a series of questions relating to fraud investigations and any recovery.

You must still provide information relating to fraud cases during previous years. If you have not reported any fraud cases for earlier years, then enter zero.

5.5 Schools subject to financial intervention

This page will ask about schools subjected to financial intervention by the local authority, for example, by suspension of delegated budgets, notices of financial concern and schools that have been required to submit recovery plans.

A single school might feature in more than one of these lines, if more than one of these measures applied to the school during the financial year 2023 to 2024.

Select ‘no’ if your local authority has not taken any form of financial intervention with any of its schools during the financial year 2023 to 2024.

If any financial intervention took place, we will ask you further questions  including the number of schools with suspended budgets, schools with notice of financial concerns, and schools requiring plans to recover a budget deficit.

5.6 DSG note to the accounts

This is the second form that you must complete.  

We have designed this new form that you can use to provide information about your authority’s use of the DSG for the 2023 to 2024 financial year  and it will do the calculations for you.  

The layout of the return mirrors the format of the DSG note to the accounts recommended by CIPFA’s Code of Practice on Local Authority Accounting in the United Kingdom. 

You must have the correct DSG amount values from the actual DSG note to the accounts for current and previous financial years before and after academy and high needs recoupments including carry forward from the previous financial year to this financial year. 

For central expenditure and individual schools budget, you must know the agreed initial budget for the current year and the previous financial year including any in year adjustments. You will also be asked about actual central expenditure and your local authority contribution in the previous financial year.

5.7 Declarations page

Once you have completed all data entries, in each form you will be required to agree to the mandatory declarations.

You will not be able to submit your form without completing the mandatory declarations.

5.8 Chief finance officer (CFO) details

It is important that you provide accurate and the most up-to-date information for the CFO at your local authority.

5.9 Submission summary

The summary page for each form allows you to check your answers before submitting the form. You can change your answers using the ‘Change’ link that appears next to each data entry.

You can also save this summary by selecting ‘Save summary as PDF’ before you submit. Alternatively, you can download it by following the steps below:

1. On the summary page, select ‘File’ and then ‘Print’. A new window will open.

2. From the dropdown menu, select ‘Save as PDF’.

3. Select ‘Save’.

We cannot accept a PDF summary of your answers as proof of submission. You must still submit the form.

You must select ‘Submit’ at the bottom of this page and you will receive a unique reference number for your submission to be processed.

5.10  Confirmation 

The final page for each form confirms your submission and will provide a unique reference number.

You will then be sent a confirmation email to the email address that you logged into DfE Sign-in with. This will contain a link to download a PDF of your submission, which is valid for 6 months from the date of your submission.

Make a note of your unique reference number as we will not include this information in your confirmation email.

5.11  Amending your submissions

You can resubmit your forms up until 5pm on Friday, 7 February 2025 when this digital portal will close. To amend and resubmit the relevant form before the deadline, you will need to sign back in and resubmit your form.

We cannot grant any extensions to the deadline.

If you make any subsequent submissions up until 7 February 2025 deadline, we will use the details you provide on your most recently submitted form and disregard previous versions.

You will receive a new unique submission reference number for your amended submission.

6. Enquiries 

If you have read this guidance and have any questions, contact us via the Customer Help Portal.

7. Feedback

We are committed to enhancing our user experience and providing an improved forms’ service to our users. User feedback is invaluable to help us to improve. We welcome your feedback, using our short  feedback form.