ESFA Update: academies 7 November 2018
Published 7 November 2018
Applies to England
© Crown copyright 2018
This publication is licensed under the terms of the Open Government Licence v3.0 except where otherwise stated. To view this licence, visit nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3 or write to the Information Policy Team, The National Archives, Kew, London TW9 4DU, or email: psi@nationalarchives.gov.uk.
Where we have identified any third party copyright information you will need to obtain permission from the copyright holders concerned.
This publication is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/esfa-update-7-november-2018/esfa-update-academies-7-november-2018
1. Action: school workforce census 2018
The school workforce census is due to open on 8 November 2018. The deadline for submitting data is 7 December 2018.
Please submit your data, via COLLECT, as soon as possible.
If you have any questions about your data, please contact us using the service request form.
2. Reminder: academies financial returns update
From 13 November, we will start to host a series of weekly Skype calls covering the accounts return. You can find out more information on our Skype call schedule.
The deadline for your external auditors to submit your trust’s accounts return is 21 January 2019. Please make sure your external auditors are registered and set up to use the financial returns online forms.
Please note the deadline for submitting your trust’s financial statements using the accounts submission coversheet is 31 December 2018.
If you have any questions, please use our online enquiry form. Please put either “accounts return” or “financial statements” at the top of your enquiry and provide your trust’s UPIN.
3. Reminder: traineeship in-year growth business case window 2018 to 2019 – 16 to 18 mainstream budget
As previously notified, ESFA will be operating a business case process for traineeship in-year growth for providers with an ESFA 16 to 18 contract. The window for submitting business cases for 2018 to 2019 will be open for 4 weeks from 12 November to 7 December 2018.
Providers should submit business cases through our online enquiry form, clearly marked as “Traineeship In-year Growth Business Case”.
Business cases must include supporting evidence of employer support for additional starts in-year, together with evidence of student demand. Business cases without this evidence cannot be supported.
All awards are subject to overall affordability and we expect to inform providers of the outcome in February 2019.
4. Information: list of trusts late with 2 or more financial returns
We have published a list of 88 trusts that were late with 2 or more financial returns in the 2017 to 2018 academic year.
Most academy trusts submitted their financial returns on time but in order to improve compliance with the submission deadlines, and in fairness to the trusts who do submit their returns on time, we have introduced a policy of naming those academy trusts who are late with 2 or more deadlines in an academic year.
We communicated this policy to the sector in the letter from ESFA’s chief executive on 5 March 2018.
5. Information: sector annual report and accounts (SARA) published
DfE has published the academies sector annual report and accounts (SARA) for the 2016 to 2017 academic year.
SARA sets out the expenditure and performance of the academy school sector from 1 September 2016 to 31 August 2017, including:
- performance statistics, as a successor report to Academies Act reports for academic years 2010 to 2015
- governance arrangements for the sector
- the financial performance of the sector for the academic year from 1 September 2016 to 31 August 2017