DfE survey: finance is source of greatest change and great stress for academies

A government survey published this month found that the freedoms associated with academy status have been put to the greatest use in finance. However they also found that higher financial reporting requirements caused some stress.

The graph above shows that 63 per cent of the 360 secondary academies that took part in the survey and 54 per cent of the 334 primary academies changed their pattern of capital expenditure.

On page 51, at the end of the report, the stress caused by new financial reporting requirements were noted: 'A significant minority highlighted areas where they felt their experience of being an academy was not as positive as hoped. The main point is around how intensive the finance demands on head teachers/school business managers.

Although academies view the intensive financial demands placed on them negatively, it could be argued this demonstrates that academies are being made to provide value for money; and are unable to waste money.

Some of the comments made by academies about intensive financial demands/bureaucracy:

“If anything, we are being monitored with far more rigour than before; for example, when we are being audited. Although this is more time consuming, I believe it is positive at the moment.”

“I had hoped for less bureaucracy and directives but this has sadly not happened. I am having to spend much more resources on back office functions such as finance and auditing than I had thought I would.”

“It is disappointing that the School Forum is a major barrier to ensuring academies are appropriately funded and also that academy audits are so much more burdensome than those for Local Authority maintained schools. The effect of this is that far more senior leadership time, in a small MAT, is spent on these issues.”

“At the moment, there is significant weight on senior leaders with regard to financial accountability. It would be helpful for the DfE to be aware that the gains made by having academy freedoms are equally balanced out by financial reporting and process accountability, which, at the moment, are demanding.”

“Although we value the freedoms academy status has given us, the back office workloads and stresses have been considerable. There appears to be audit after audit 2 after audit. We understand the reasons, but we weren't made aware at the start of our journey. The role of the accounting officer needs to be reviewed as there appear to be conflicting messages.”