Introducing ICFP.school – our online Integrated Curriculum and Financial Planning tool
We are really pleased to announce that we are in the final stages of testing our online Integrated Curriculum and Financial Planning tool, ICFP.school.
The idea behind the tool is to make the completion of an ICFP review of a school or trust as easy as possible by:
- Pre-populating previous years with publicly available data
- Ensuring that the requirements for data entry are minimised
- Clear input of curriculum data to avoid errors
The system has been developed and tested by our team of SRMAs (School Resource Management Advisers) and includes advice about how to address the issues identified. Schools can use this system to complete the analysis, but then can use the system to identify how to improve efficiency.
All users of the system who wish to will be able to book a meeting to discuss their analysis with an accredited School Resource Management Adviser.
If you are interested in being part of our Beta testing then please send us a message. Or we expect to launch the commercial version of the online tool in late October.
About our SRMA accreditation
The consultants at TSO Education are specialists in both Education Leadership and Education Finance. Most of our consultants are accredited School Resource Management Advisers (SRMAs) – currently we have nine SRMAs signed up as consultants (including our two directors). To ensure they have the necessary skills, knowledge and experience to undertake the role they have all passed an independent accreditation panel. As part of the ISBL SRMA team, our highly skilled consultants are able to provide high levels of support and insight.
All our consultants have held senior posts in schools, academies and MATs. With a wide range of experience and knowledge our consultants support our clients by providing evidence-based recommendations, promote and share best practice on managing resources across maintained schools and academy trusts, identify opportunities where schools and trusts can improve efficiency/increase their revenue generation and support schools and trusts to strengthen their governance and oversight of their finances.
Contact us for more information on how our services can be beneficial to you and your school, trust or local authority.
Managing your School Estate
Capital advisers programme – Pilot Evaluation
A report evaluating the pilot programme to support trusts to strategically manage their estates and make the best use of their capital funding.
The Pilot, which ran from March to July 2021, gaged if, and in what circumstance, an assessment by capital advisers could help multi-academy trusts (MATs) manage their estates and make the most use of their school condition allocations (SCA). A sample of 20 trusts who receive SCA were selected, ensuring variety in geographical spread and trust sizes, to participate in the Capital Advisers Programme (CAP) pilot.
Responses at the end of the pilot were mostly positive with no negative feedback, with trusts indicating “it helped with estates strategy planning, providing assurance and was beneficial for new/growing trusts…”.
Subsequent to the success of the SRMA pilot, the focus of CAP has been on the support and capability building pillars of the SRMA programme. A wider rollout of the CAP programme, which promotes best practice in line with GEMS could be advantageous for trusts.
“CAP will be expanded in the 2022/23 academic year as the pilot demonstrated significant potential to support schools. The department is continually improving its offer to schools, including industry-leading practice and tools in GEMS. This will help schools achieve safe, well-maintained buildings, helping to support world-class teaching and learning.”
The full pilot evaluation report is now available of gov.uk website. Click here for quick access.
Financial Advice for Schools – DfE List
