No Need to Panic: Preparing for Your SRMA Visit

In this article by Phil Burton, Success Academy Trust Business Manager, we look at why there’s no need to panic at the prospect of a School Resource Management Advisor (SRMA) visit

More and more we are seeing that lots of grants such as CIF are coming with the requirement to have a SMRA visit – and if we are honest having a visit to do an in-depth review of how you manage your finances can feel a bit daunting. However, having recently been through an SRMA visit I would say there is no need to panic!

Our visit came off the back of an expansion at one of our schools. We were contacted by the appointed person who initially checked that we had no connection with them, after all, it is supposed to be independent. Once this was confirmed we arranged the date for the visit.

Then the work began, a list of things they wanted to see in advance of the meeting.  It covered a wide range of documents so they could get a real feel for how the whole trust was managing the finances.  The documents included

• Trustee and Local Governor Minutes for Full and Finance committees
• The latest copies of our 5-year plan and forward budgeting information
• Contract register
• Copies of recent ICFP documents
• School Improvement Plan
• Pupil Forecast numbers
• Building Asset management grids / plan
• View my financial insight information

We also had to complete a spreadsheet that they sent which took a lot of the numbers from the above and populated it into a system. This then enabled them to see what we were overspending on or not.

On the day of the visit, the SRMA spent around an hour with the Chair of Trustees, an hour with the MAT CEO and school representatives and then around two hours with the MAT CFO and Trust Business Managers.  They talked through how we felt the finances were being managed, what we would do differently and how we could make a difference.  They then talked through some of the metrics, nothing we did not already know, and we explained and put the context around them. As we had already done the work previously there was nothing that caught us by surprise.

We were able to ask them about things and what they thought about the way things are run and organised. They will of course find things to look at, why wouldn’t they that is what they are paid to do.

After the discussions, they head off to populate their report for the Trustees / Governors. You get a draft version which you can challenge if you wish.  The report then goes through several quality assurance centres before ending up with some department within DfE Towers.  As a MAT or school we are then required to look at the report and pull together our actions. We did ask the question do we have to follow it – the reply was “Well no, but if you have serious issues in a few years’ time questions will be asked”.  I suppose in short that means please do what is requested!

In short, do you need to be overly worried about a visit?  Well, if you are doing the paperwork, the benchmarking and ICFP then no, as you will already know what is coming and have the answers.