Budget Planning with your Schools Financial Benchmarking Report

Rebecca Watkins - 19 November, 2019

Arbor Insight | School Improvement | School Operations | Schools

Category : Blog

Budget Planning with your Schools Financial Benchmarking Report

We are all aware of the widespread funding shortfalls in the education sector, and it’s definitely a challenging time to be a budget holder in schools and Multi Academy Trusts. Having full visibility of all income and expenditure is hugely important in order to understand your school’s financial allocations, like where you may be lacking in funding and areas you might be overspending in. 

We have created a Schools Financial Benchmarking report (SFB) for every state school in England, which displays all of your income and expenditure in a clear, easy-to-read PDF report. Over 1,000 schools have used their Arbor Insight Financial Benchmarking report since we launched it in 2015; sharing it with governors, using it as evidence in internal and external meetings and using it to inform their budget planning.

(Image 1: A screenshot of Grant Funding as presented in Arbor’s Financial Benchmarking Report)

Your school budget should reflect your School Improvement Plan – covering a five-year basis, showing two years in retrospect, the current year, and the next two years’ forecast.

Before setting up any new budget, you’ll want to have handy:

• Old budgets/past financial data to look at past performance, so you can learn from under and over-spends. You can find the last 2 years of financial data in your SFB report with clear trends shown in line graphs and 3-year rolling averages 
• Pupil numbers, so you can find the last 5 years of your school numbers in the free ‘School Context’ dashboards in your Insight portal and in the free Performance Summary report we’ll be launching in Spring Term (keep an eye out!)
• Exam results, so you can identify which parts of the curriculum could benefit from more money, and which have previously benefited. You can use your free Attainment and Progress dashboards or Premium Performance Reports- available to purchase from your Arbor Insight portal or Staffing requirements, including updated pay scales.
• Other resource requirements – money needed for insurance, maintenance, etc.

Being aware of where you expect to see larger expenditure and accounting up front for your budget planning and communication is really important. For example, staffing costs in schools typically account for between 75 to 85% of the overall school expenditure and premises costs 10 to 12%. It’s therefore important to forecast likely costs in these areas early on. In your SFB report, you will see all expenditure and income sections shown as a percentage of total spend so you can visualise all of your finances better. We also break down every value as an amount that has been spent or received per pupil in your school. 

(Image 2: A screenshot of total spend as presented in Arbor’s Financial Benchmarking Report)

Arbor’s Schools Financial Benchmarking report is a useful resource for school budgeters, as you can see how much schools in your local authority spend on resources, such as classroom assistants, catering, building maintenance and so on. We also benchmark you school against other schools that have a similar demographic cohort of pupils to you, weighted by percentage of prior attainment, FSM and EAL pupils. If you have a high proportion of disadvantaged pupils, or perhaps pupils with low prior attainment, it’s important to see whether similar schools have comparable spending patterns – or if being benchmarked against these schools highlights some areas of funding/spending that might be good to look into. 

In terms of planning your budget and making sure it aligns with your school improvement planning, you can see how your finances have shaped up over the last 3 years with our line graphs that include trend figures. We also show the last 3 years of finances for each resource compared with that of the national average, schools in your LA and schools like you. Our 3-year rolling average for each expenditure and income resource can help you predict and plan your future 3 year expenditure planning. 

(Image 3: A screenshot of Premises as presented in Arbor’s Financial Benchmarking Report)

How to present this data to other key stakeholders:

Now you’ve got to break down the school budget for the governors. Come with easy-to-understand, clear budget reporting sheets, such as your Schools Financial Benchmarking report and feel prepared to explain any holes with recommendations for avoiding them in the future. For example, if you overspent on building maintenance this year, you could suggest implementing more regular building checks to spot problem areas, or negotiating better terms with your insurers and maintenance providers.

If you’re looking to keep your cost low and give next year’s budget a little wiggle room, look at how Arbor’s simple, smart MIS can help you not only centralise your systems and data, but also your costs, so that you can focus on what matters most, your pupils. 

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If you have any questions or would like any help, you can reach the Arbor Insight team at insight@arbor-education.com or by calling us on 0207 043 1830.

Arbor Insight is a free tool we offer alongside our hassle-free MIS that schools and MATs love to use. If you’re interested in learning more about how our MIS can make daily school admin easier and your data more useful, book a free demo here or call our MIS Demo Team on 0208 050 1028.