Tour De Force - Managing Finances

A short blog this week. With the Tour de France passing through my home town – yes I’m based in sunny Yorkshire! – there has not been too much time for blogging. As the title to this blog suggesting, managing the school’s finances is a major achievement. In the last blog we outlined the timing of a number of grant payments from the EFA over the next year. One of these is UIFSM – and this appears to create cash flow problems for those schools with significant increases in the number of pupils entering reception and key stage 1. The Education Funding Agency has calculated and paid the provisional funding for the UIFSM entitlement. The July payment includes:

• The provisional calculation of UIFSM for the academic year 2014/15, based upon the data in the January 2014 census, multiplied by 7/12ths.
• The full payment of the small schools transitional funding for schools with less than 150 pupils.

There will be a final calculation for the whole academic year based on actual take up of meals as recorded in the censuses. Schools will then receive the final calculated payment for the whole academic year less the July 2014 payment. The small schools element of the funding is final and will not be recalculated at a later date. There is a problem, though,  for schools moving from one form entry to two form entry or new schools that are growing, for example this year they have just a reception year but next year will have year 1 as well. In a nutshell a new school may have been funded for 1 year group for two terms when in fact they will have two year groups from September 2014. Whilst I am making enquiries with the EFA for schools I am aware of, I would welcome the thoughts of others with similar issues. In the situation above, with half the funding required, how will you manage UIFSM? Next week will be the last blog before many schools break up. SBS will continue to provide updates during the break though – so keep in touch with us.