The School and Early Years Finance (England) Regulations give effect to the changes to the school funding system previously announced.
The 2021 regulations came into force February 2021 and can be found via the following link: The School and Early Years Finance (England) Regulations 2021 (legislation.gov.uk)
Schools financial value standard (SFVS)
The standard is a mandatory requirement for local authority maintained schools. Governing bodies of maintained schools or management committees of pupil referral units (PRUs) have formal responsibility for the financial management of their schools, and so the standard is primarily aimed at governors or management committees. The SFVS has been designed to assist schools to manage their finances and to give assurance that they have secure financial management in place.
Annual Completion
The Directed Revisions 2012 to the Schemes for Financing Schools makes it a mandatory requirement for all local authority maintained schools to complete the SFVS assessment form on an annual basis and submit a signed copy (by the Chair of Governors or management committee) to their authority.
What do schools need to do?
The standard has self-assessment questions which governing bodies or management committees should formally discuss annually with the head teacher and senior staff.
The questions are split into four sections relating to:
- The Governing Body and School Staff
- Setting the Budget
- Value for Money
- Protecting Public Money
Support notes can be found at https://www.gov.uk/schools-financial-value-standard-and-assurance-sfvs
The notes provide clarification of the questions, examples of good practice and information on further support to assist schools in addressing specific issues.
In addition the Financial Management for Schools (FMS) Team and Veritau have prepared a document which puts the SFVS into a North Yorkshire context. This has been placed on cyps.info and can be accessed by FMS subscribers.
Contact Veritau on internal.audit@veritau.co.uk if you have any queries.
