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Presenting your budget to governors: templates
Keep your governors fully informed about your budget planning and decision making with our downloadable templates. You'll find a detailed budget planner, and a planning report that'll help you head off likely questions from governors.
Contents
Governors will scrutinise your budget before they approve it
They're required to check that you're managing resources and finances effectively.
This usually takes place at two levels (depending on the governance structure at your school/trust):
- Finance committee – where governors look at your budget projection and report in detail
- Full governing board – where the chair of the finance committee recommends the budget for approval to the board, following the detailed scrutiny by the committee
Download our budget planning and reporting templates
Detailed budget planner
Use this to present your income and expenditure in detail:
Note: this is the same spreadsheet as in our budget planning article – if you've already filled it in, go straight to the report template below. It's also worth checking with your LA/trust in case they have budget planning tools they'd prefer you to use.
Our planner includes:
- Space to set out detailed budget planning for the next few years
- An automatically updated summary report, which gives an overarching view of your financial plans
It's based on the consistent financial reporting (CFR) framework from the Education and Skills Funding Agency. The CFR applies to maintained schools, but academies can still use this spreadsheet.
Budget planning report
This is designed to be presented to governors alongside the budget. It'll help you:
- Explain the thinking behind your budget planning decisions
- Head off likely questions from governors
- Explain any significant variations between this year's budget and last year's
Sources
Our associate education experts Martin Owen, Terry Gillard and Julie Cordiner helped us with these templates.
Martin is a chartered accountant (CPFA). He has over 20 years of experience working with academies and schools to improve their governance, leadership and management of financial, business and operational processes.
Terry is an experienced school business manager who has worked in several primary schools.
Julie is an independent consultant specialising in school funding and education finance. She advises schools and local authorities on managing their budgets and achieving value for money.
- Academies Financial Handbook: changes from September 2020
- Academies: running a deficit budget
- Achieving efficiency in the staffing budget
- Allocating departmental budgets
- Benchmarking data: questions to generate discussion and analysis
- Benchmarking spending
- Benchmarking staff salaries
- Budget planning: how to and templates
- Budget reporting and monitoring systems
- Calculating the cost of lessons and courses
- Consistent financial reporting (CFR)
- Costing whole-school SEN provision
- Finance glossary
- Showcase: Financial efficiency in a medium-size primary school
- Financial procedures manuals: examples
- Financial transparency: upcoming requirements for maintained schools New
- Informing staff about a deficit budget
- QuickRead: Managing the school budget
- Maximising financial efficiency: advice and case studies
- Paying for refreshments out of the school budget
- Purchases: reviewing value for money
- Request form for curriculum funds: template and guidance
- School budget: effective monitoring meetings
- School budget: expenditure on staffing
- Schools Financial Value Standard (SFVS): summary
- Teachers' pension grant: how to find out your allocation
- Using Integrated Curriculum Financial Planning to maximise your resources
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