From Finance Hurdles to Funding Success: Life in a New MAT

In this candid reflection, Lisa Bower shares the challenges, surprises and successes of leading her school through last stage of the transition to academy status

Our trust finally opened on the March 01 of this year. We haven’t joined an existing trust, instead opting to open a new one. This has been exciting, but also a little terrifying.  It took over a year for us to get the academy opened – I was so relieved when it finally happened, little did I know that this was the point that the hard work really started.

New Information, New Processes

I have been struck by how difficult it has been to find information and processes. There isn’t one obvious source of information, other than the Academies Handbook, but that feels more like a guideline than a manual! As someone who came from a maintained school, I have been used to being spoon fed information, and all of a sudden that doesn’t happen anymore. I have to keep up to date with funding, grants, payment schedules, manage audits (they never happened previously) and ensure everyone abides by the Academies Handbook.

Through the whole process of academisation I have felt that step by step guides on how to do things would be useful, and whilst you can surf the internet and find things out, it is difficult to google what you don’t know. I am fortunate in that I have a professional network of people that I have called on to answer questions (I’m sure some of them seem ridiculous), but throughout this journey it is that network that has kept me sane.

Caught By Surprise

Finance is obviously crucial, and moving the year end from 31^st March to 31^st August has been tricky, setting a budget for a 6-month period and trying to agree the final balance figure with the local authority have been stumbling blocks. But it is the areas that I hadn’t really considered that have caught me by surprise.

The Apprenticeship Levy…. there is very little guidance on how to set it up, not helped by HMRC taking a whole year’s payment rather than one month in our first payrun. Something that I am still trying to reconcile. Talking of HMRC, VAT has been another area that has been complicated. It took months for our first claim to be approved, and we all know how difficult it is to speak to someone at HMRC to get things resolved.

I was aware that I would have to submit the BFR by 31^st August, and I had my budget approved by the trustees so that I could do this work over the summer holidays. But, oh my gosh, I found it complicated! I am sure that next year it will be much easier, but issues with ledger codes, balancing to the budget and my lack of understanding of the system didn’t help. Once I had submitted it, I came across (by accident) the DfE sessions supporting with the submission of the BFR, but by that point it was too late.

Benefits and Successes

Whilst it sounds like I am complaining, I don’t mean to. I was always excited and nervous about academisation, and I was never under any illusion that it wouldn’t be difficult. Being an academy has already given us more autonomy. We have been successful in three bids for CIF funding, which will enable us to complete crucial roof repairs that we would never have been able to afford otherwise. Ensuring that the school’s processes and the trust processes work in parallel has been tricky, and as we have only two schools currently in the MAT, it has been tricky to keep on top of all day to day finances – ordering, invoicing etc.- while setting up the new systems, and I have been nervous of making a rash decision and getting it wrong.  I am now understanding what we need from a staffing point of view so am able to recruit and, this time next year, I am confident that everything will have calmed down.

A lot of school business leaders will agree that our role is challenging and isolated. There is only one SBL in a school, and so there isn’t much opportunity to bounce ideas around and to brainstorm, and let’s be honest the focus for most people in a school is the education, rather than the cost of supply teachers!  This makes our role even more important so having the ability to talk to other people in a similar position and to support each other is absolutely crucial.