ESFA e-bulletin for academies: 14 September 2017
Published 14 September 2017
Applies to England
© Crown copyright 2017
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This publication is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/esfa-e-bulletin-14-september-2017-issue-187/esfa-e-bulletin-for-academies-14-september-2017
1. Information: final national funding formula consultation response
The Secretary of State for Education set out the final design of the national funding formulae (NFFs) for schools and high needs in a speech to Parliament today. This is set out in detail in the national funding formula for schools and high needs policy paper.
You can read the government’s response to the second stage schools national funding formula consultation and high needs national funding formula consultation.
We will shortly update the schools operational guidance for 2018 to 2019 to reflect this.
We will also shortly publish the high needs operational guidance for 2018 to 2019.
2. Action: register now for ESFA financial returns webinars
You can register now for our webinars providing help with completing the new land and buildings collection tool and the academies accounts return (auditors should attend this too).
3. Reminder: making an accurate autumn census return
The autumn school census 2017 opens on 5 October 2017. The deadline for approved submissions is 1 November 2017. Local authorities and the department expect zero errors on the census return.
School census data is used to calculate funding allocations for schools and academies and institutions may not receive the correct funding if the data returned is not accurate. Where schools make an error in the data they return, there is no guarantee that it will be subsequently corrected. Therefore we urge all institutions to take particular care over data entry, particularly in respect of post-16 students and their qualifications data, as this is where we see the highest number of errors.
We’ve published a guide to help schools and local authorities complete and submit their autumn 2017 school census data.
We’ve published an interactive tool to support the return of accurate 16 to 19 school census data. The tool is aimed at business managers and staff responsible for preparing and submitting the autumn school census return.
Contact us if you have a question about the tool.
4. Information: 2017 to 2018 payment schedules uploaded for academies open up to August 2017
For academies open up to August 2017, we’ve uploaded the general annual grant (GAG) payment schedules for 2017 to 2018 to the ESFA Information Exchange.
The documents are available in your 2017/18 ‘revenue funding’ folder on the Document Exchange section.
Apologies for the slight delay in providing them this year. We’ll upload the payment schedules for academies who opened in September by early October.
5. Information: ESFA financial management factsheets
You can access the ESFA financial management factsheet library for free via the NASBM website.
The library includes best-practice factsheets covering policies, templates and guidance notes for academies. We have recently updated the following factsheets:
- leasing
- internal control and scrutiny
- fraud
- management accounts
- choosing an auditor