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The third core function: overseeing financial performance
All governors have a part to play in monitoring school finance. Get a concise overview of what your role is and what you're monitoring, so you can make sure money's well spent.
Our associate education experts, Graeme Hornsby and Matt Miller, helped us to write this article.
Get a handle on the basics
Familiarise yourself with how your school is funded (with our articles for maintained schools and academies) so you can understand the budget and ask better questions.
You also need to know what responsibilities have been delegated to your board. If you’re:
- A maintained school, read your local authority's scheme of financial delegation
- An academy, read your scheme of delegation
- On a local governing board (LGB), find out more about your role in finance here
The board's role
All governors have financial responsibility. However, you don't need to be an expert, and you won't be involved in everything.
Your job is to make sure that:
The way you'll monitor this will depend on what structures your school has in place,
- Academy Trust Handbook: changes from September 2021
- Financial transparency: requirements for maintained schools
- How to interrogate a finance report
- How to monitor and scrutinise the coronavirus catch-up premium
- How to monitor your school's pupil premium report
- How to use financial benchmarking Updated
- Monitoring school finance: an overview
- Pupil premium: ensuring value for money
- Pupil premium spending: report to governors
- Risk registers: summary and guidance
- Schools Financial Value Standard (SFVS): summary and questions to ask
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