Our associate education experts Brendan Hollyer, Graeme Hornsby, Matt Miller, David New and Martin Owen helped us to write this article.
At-a-glance overview
The steps recommended in this article assume you have a finance committee, but your school might do things differently. For example, if you don't have a finance committee, your full governing board will carry out step 3 and you'll likely have a designated lead finance governor as the board's 'expert'.
An annual budget, which must be approved by your full board or a committee. Your school should check with your local authority (LA): When your deadline is for submitting this. It should be some time in May or June, but your LA might expect to see a provisional plan earlier than this too (as explained in section 4.3 of this DfE guidance) To agree what format the document should take and how your school should submit it A separate 3-year