Correspondence

ESFA e-bulletin for academies: 7 September 2017

Published 7 September 2017

This correspondence was withdrawn on 23 December 2019

This has been withdrawn as it’s out of date. The EFA e-bulletin has been replaced by ESFA Update.

Applies to England

1. Action: do we have the correct contact information for you and your trust?

Please log on to the governance section of EduBase, via Secure Access, to ensure we hold the latest contact information for your academy trust.

You must complete all fields marked with an * in EduBase for the named positions. This includes direct contact information for the accounting officer, chief financial officer and chair of trustee positions.

The Academies Financial Handbook sets out the requirement that academy trusts must notify ESFA about the vacating and filling of positions of member, trustee, accounting officer and chief financial officer. Trusts must notify ESFA within 14 days of any change.

We rely on academy trusts providing us with up-to-date contact information. We use this to send you important communications throughout the academic year.

2. Information: get information about schools

We are replacing the current EduBase system with a new service, get information about schools. This new service will be available on Monday 18 September. You can familiarise yourself with the new service before it goes live by visiting the test version.

Thank you to those users that have provided useful feedback, which is helping us to identify future improvements to the service.

All existing account details (managed through Secure Access) will continue to be valid once the new service is live and will provide the same privileges as now.

You should not make any changes to EduBase from 5pm on Friday 15 September so that data can be migrated to the new service over the weekend of 16/17 September.

3. Information: accounts return 2016 to 2017

In Peter Lauener’s letter of 30 June 2017 we said the guidance and workbook accompanying the accounts return would be available from 1 September 2017. However, we are still finalising the guidance and workbook following the user acceptance testing we carried out during August. The feedback we have received from the user acceptance testing has included suggestions to improve the guidance, which we will include in the final version.

We will issue the guidance and workbook at the same time the accounts return goes live on 1 October 2017.

4. Information: claims for 16 to 19 Bursary Fund for vulnerable students

The online form to claim from the 16 to 19 Bursary Fund for vulnerable students for the academic year 2017 to 2018 is now available on the Student Bursary Support Service (SBSS) portal.

5. Action: Condition Spend Data Collection (CSDC) 2017

We are conducting a data collection to understand the use made of the School Condition Allocation (SCA) for the 2016 to 2017 financial year. The deadline for submitting data is Friday 27 October 2017.

You can only submit data using our online portal. We have published a user guide which provides information on how to submit a CSDC return.

If you have any queries then please contact: ConditionSpend.COLLECTION@education.gov.uk.

6. Information: Condition Data Collection (CDC) update

The Condition Data Collection (CDC) programme is collecting building condition data and some associated contextual data on approximately 22,000 schools – all the government maintained schools in England.

We are currently concluding the first of six tranches, and began surveying tranche 2 schools in July.

For more information about the Condition Data Collection programme, visit GOV.UK or follow @ESFA_academies on Twitter.