Academy Journey: The Halfway Point

As her academy journey continues, Tricia Wilkin reflects on her progress halfway through her secondment, sharing insights on team dynamics, the audit process and her curiosity about staff structures

I cannot believe how quickly the last six months have gone! With my secondment ending part way through the summer holidays, I’m nearly halfway. I recently went back to my old school in my role as governance professional and it was lovely to see all the smiling faces and receive so many hugs from the staff and children. It really did feel like home.

Back at the trust, unfortunately, things have not gone to plan since my last update, and we were still waiting for our new admin member to join the team as we shut up shop for the Christmas break (as of the time of writing!). With this, the New Year brings with it less excitement for the team than had been planned, however, they are still buoyant and more positive as they can see changes are happening and new procedures are being put in place that only sometimes come from a fresh set of eyes.

Where Are We Now?

The last half term had kicked off with the annual audit for the trust which the CFO had been prepping for. For a week the auditors set up camp in the central team office asking questions left, right and centre. On one hand, it was lovely to not be the sole person these were being fired at like when the audit took place back at my maintained school, however, it was also odd not being the one fully in control (which might say a lot about my personality). Perhaps a New Year’s Resolution should be to enjoy the lack of financial control more for the rest of my time at the trust.

Thankfully after a week’s worth of being in and out of the personnel files and tracking down information from when I was not at the school, it was all over and had gone well with the final piece being a review with the auditors and the trust board before everything was signed off, closed off and uploaded. It’s made me very aware of the importance of having evidence filed as the year goes on as this was my greatest difficulty as I had not been in the post the year the audit had related to. I have however made sure I have set up an audit folder and saved all reports in there when produced to make the task easier for the returning COO for next year’s audit.

Making Preparations

I have made more of the processes electronic as she previously has favoured paper files for her documents however from speaking with her this historically has been down to a lack of time rather than knowledge. If I can make her job easier for when she returns, I will feel a huge sense of satisfaction like I do when completing my SLE deployments.

Curiosity Piqued

I saw a job advertised the other day for a CFO and out of curiosity I read the job description where it said that they were line-managed by the COO. Staff structures at academy trusts really do differ greatly, even in the same county. This also seems to go for pay structures. The trust I work in has the COO and CFO at the same level, both line managed by the CEO.

Coming from a mainstream setting where the finance role also falls under my remit it got me wondering why academy trusts come up with their structures – or do the structures form around the people who are in the positions, something that I believe is most likely true as trusts have more flexibility to make changes in their structures as they grow and change and adapt around the people they employ and their strengths. What do you think? Is this perhaps something maintained schools should have more control over?