Integrated Curriculum Financial Planning (ICFP) is now an essential part of effective financial management for Multi Academy Trusts. It brings curriculum and finance leaders together to help them understand how resources are used and how they can better align spending with school improvement priorities.
Yet one challenge remains consistent across the sector: securing buy-in from senior leadership teams. Without their engagement, ICFP risks being seen as a finance exercise rather than a framework for improving outcomes.
Here’s how trusts are building lasting SLT engagement and embedding ICFP into everyday practice.
1. Start with education, not finance
ICFP can easily appear to be led by finance. But finance teams aren’t the ones who know the details of curriculum planning or staff deployment. That knowledge sits with headteachers and curriculum leaders.
Position ICFP as a school improvement tool, not a financial mechanism. When it starts with education, it becomes a collaborative process focused on delivering the best possible curriculum within available resources.
While balancing the books will always be essential, putting the curriculum first means shaping financial decisions around educational intent, not the other way round.
2. Make curriculum leaders owners of ICFP
ICFP delivers lasting impact when it’s shaped by those closest to teaching and learning. Involve curriculum leaders from the start so that the model reflects what’s really happening across schools.
Trusts that work this way report smoother implementation, faster sign-offs and greater confidence in the data. Ownership builds trust and keeps the model live, rather than a static report filed away each year.
3. Link ICFP to strategic priorities
SLT buy-in grows when ICFP is tied directly to trust-wide and school-level strategies. Use ICFP data to support conversations about curriculum offers and staffing structures so that decisions are based on evidence, not assumptions.
When everyone can see how resource choices affect strategic goals, ICFP becomes part of the improvement process. It connects plans, budgets and outcomes in one clear picture.
4. Use transparency to build confidence
In many trusts, ICFP starts in spreadsheets, and that’s where the problems begin. Each school often works from its own version, using slightly different formulas or coding. Over time, these variations lead to inconsistencies that make cross-trust comparisons unreliable.
Spreadsheets also age quickly. They drift out of sync with the latest staffing changes or budget updates, leaving leaders to question which numbers can be trusted. Even small formula errors can distort costings or ratios and change the conversation entirely.
When data isn’t current or consistent, confidence disappears. Leaders end up debating which version is right instead of what the data means. Restoring that shared visibility is the first step to meaningful collaboration.
5. Set clear timelines and accountability
Establish a timeline for ICFP reviews and include them as standing items in committee and trustee meetings. Regular visibility maintains momentum and creates shared accountability across the trust.
The real impact comes when ICFP becomes part of ongoing planning, not an annual exercise. Referring to it throughout the year keeps decisions grounded in up-to-date information and makes it easier to adapt when priorities or circumstances change. When engagement becomes routine, buy-in follows naturally.
6. Empower leaders with choices, not instructions
ICFP shouldn’t dictate decisions. It should frame choices. Presenting the cost of different staffing or curriculum models allows leaders to make informed, evidence-based decisions.
Many trusts use this approach to strengthen recruitment. New post requests are reviewed against ICFP data to confirm affordability and highlight opportunities for redeployment. When a consistent, trust-wide model is in place, it becomes easier to identify where capacity can be shared between schools, reducing agency costs while retaining expertise.
7. Show the benefits early
Recent successes across trusts that have embedded ICFP effectively include examples like these. Dashboards showing the percentage of lessons taught by subject specialists helped one trust identify where non-specialists were being overused. Another trust reviewed a long-standing policy of providing extra PPA time after ICFP revealed the full budget impact.
When leaders can see tangible results early on, ICFP feels practical and relevant rather than theoretical. Those early wins help build confidence and momentum.
8. Keep the focus on school improvement
ICFP isn’t about cutting costs. It’s about understanding them and using that insight to strengthen teaching and learning. By linking resources to curriculum plans, ICFP creates a shared language for improvement and equity.
When leaders see that clarity and collaboration are the aim, not compliance, ICFP becomes a natural part of school improvement conversations.
Why ICFP is the solution
Every trust that succeeds with ICFP reaches the same conclusion: it unites curriculum and finance leaders around a shared plan.
- It takes conversations beyond spreadsheets and ratios, giving headteachers and curriculum leads visibility of how resources are used.
- It builds transparency and consistency, so everyone is working from the same information.
- It empowers SLT to make informed decisions rather than reacting to budget pressures.
- It links directly to school improvement by showing how spending affects teaching, learning and pupil experience.
- And most importantly, it creates trust-wide equity by ensuring resources are deployed fairly and strategically.
ICFP is not just a planning tool. It is a framework for building collaboration, empowering leaders, and delivering better outcomes across your Multi Academy Trust.
Bringing it all together with IMP ICFP
Many trusts start their ICFP journey in spreadsheets, but that approach can only take you so far. When data sits in multiple files across schools, it becomes difficult to keep everything consistent, reconciled, and up to date. Even small formula errors or version differences can create uncertainty and make conversations harder to move forward.
That is often when buy-in starts to fade. Leaders lose confidence when the numbers do not line up or when analysis takes too long to produce. The process becomes about defending data instead of shaping decisions.
IMP ICFP gives trusts the structure and shared visibility needed to make ICFP work in practice. It brings every school’s curriculum, staffing, and financial data into one connected view, creating the consistency and transparency that build engagement. With reliable data at their fingertips, leaders can focus on what matters most: improving outcomes across every school in the trust.
If you want to see how this can work in practice, explore IMP ICFP and discover how it can help your trust plan with confidence.
