It also incorporates the financial implications of other plans, such as the school’s asset management plan. The budget covers a specific time period, and details planned expenditure and income.
Budget monitoring is an ongoing process by which the school ensures that the development/improvement plan is achieved, in terms of its expenditure and income objectives.
Budget monitoring ensures that resources deployed by the school are used for their planned purposes and are properly accounted for internally and, where necessary, effectively reported to external bodies. This will ensure the economic, effective and efficient use of resources and aid the identification of potential (underspend) opportunities and/or (overspend) issues and allow corrective action to be taken.
The headteacher and governing body are responsible for monitoring the budget, but they may delegate authority to others within the school. However, the headteacher and governing body cannot delegate their responsibility for the management of resources (income and expenditure) within their budget.
The frequency of budget monitoring is, to some extent, dependent on the needs and requirements of the school.
The budget monitoring should be at a frequency with which the governors and school are comfortable that it provides confidence that they are in control of the budget, on track to achieving the planned objectives/position and provides sufficient time for remedial actions to be taken and have an impact. For schools, this would typically be at least monthly for the leadership team and termly for the governing body.
The process should be continuous, building on previous months monitoring reporting, able to be performed on demand and in real-time as possible.
Under section 2.2. Provision of financial information and reports of the Scheme for Financing Schools, there is a requirement for schools to submit budget monitoring reports to the local authority up to four times each financial year. The schedule is:
2023-24
- Month 3 (June) Monday 17 July 2023
- Month 6 (September) Monday 16 October 2023
- Month 9 (December) Monday 22 January 2024
- Month 11 (February) Friday 15 March 2024
2024-2025
- Month 3 (June) Monday 15 July 2024
- Month 6 (September) Tuesday 15 October 2024
- Month 9 (December) Monday 20 January 2025
- Month 11 (February) Monday 17 March 2025
If the local authority has notified the school that, in its view, the school’s financial position requires more frequent review, the monthly budget monitoring submission timetable is detailed in chapter 41 of the school's Financial Manual of Guidance.
If you require support, help and guidance to produce budget monitoring reports, please contact your named EFS finance adviser.