Towards the end of the last academic year, we published the findings of our first MAT CFO Insights Survey. In the survey, MAT finance leaders called on the new government to provide increased budgets to support staff pay awards and rising costs, higher and fairer funding for SEND provisions to adequately support pupils with special needs, and multi-year funding settlements to support trust financial sustainability.
During the first week of the summer holidays, we finally saw light of day on the teacher pay award, with the Education Secretary accepting the recommendations of the School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB) and confirming that a 5.5% pay award would see pay packets increase by over £2,500 for the average classroom teacher, taking the median salary for 2024-25 to over £49,000 a year.
The STRB estimates its recommendations will increase the pay bill by £1.65 billion for mainstream schools but the government has said the deal will be fully funded at a national level. The Department for Education (DfE) has announced that schools, including mainstream, special and alternative provision, will be provided with almost £1.1 billion in additional funding to support them with overall costs in 2024-25.
In terms of wider funding, DfE will also provide an additional £97 million for schools delivering post-16 education and £34 million for schools delivering early years provision. In total, this is an increase in funding of almost £1.2 billion. This will all be provided through the new Core Schools Budget Grant (CSBG). We have produced a free CSBG Calculator to give trusts the values across the whole funding period, to help them understand the impact
on their MAT.
Teaching union general secretaries have welcomed the fully funded pay offer, and the government will confirm finalised departmental budgets for this financial year and next at the Autumn Budget on 30th October. A multi-year spending review will conclude in Spring 2025.
The biggest pain point for MAT finance leaders
At the time of our MAT CFO Insights Survey (June 2024), the biggest financial pain point for MAT finance leaders was rising staff costs (pay increases etc) as identified by 99 out of 101 respondents. The majority of respondents (46) said they could currently afford only a 2% teacher pay award for 2024-25, and the same for a support staff pay award (35). Whilst core revenue funding for schools and high needs will now total over £61.8 billion in 2024-25, DfE has said, it remains to be seen whether this is enough. Two of the strategic measures that trusts have reported putting in place to improve their trust’s overall financial position are ICFP and GAG pooling. GAG pooling we will cover in a separate article, but 58 MAT finance leaders responding to our survey reported adopting ICFP.
When specifically asked if they were using ICFP to plan their staff deployment, and how impactful that has been to ensure sustainable financial planning, there was a mixed response. Whereas four trusts said ICFP had been “extremely impactful”, 20 trusts reported it has been “very impactful” and a further 14 ranked it as “slightly impactful”; another 41 viewed it to be “moderately impactful” and 22 “not at all impactful”.
For those trusts that have not introduced trust-wide ICFP, the two main challenges that are holding them back are “struggling to get buy-in from headteachers” and “the tools we use are clunky and therefore ICFP cannot be done effectively” (20 responses each). IMP ICFP, which we launched in the 2023-24 academic year and is now used by around 1,000 schools (600 primary/400 secondary) across over 80 MATs, is part of the solution for driving forward effectiveness around the implementation of ICFP. Trusts including HEART Academies Trust, King Edward VI Academy Trust Birmingham and Red Kite Learning Trust have all spoken about their ICFP journey, as they align their curriculum and finance leadership, look to the future with multi-year planning and enjoy MAT-first design (waving goodbye to clunky spreadsheets in the process). We have also recently run a webinar on Embedded ICFP: What does this look like in practice and how does it benefit your trust?, which you can watch back here, and created a comprehensive guide on how ICFP can improve decision-making for trusts and pupils.
The benefits of a MAT-led approach to ICFP
In summary, ICFP is making sure that resources are allocated as effectively as possible so the best possible education can be delivered. But at IMP, we think there are many additional benefits to ICFP, and these are some of our favourites:
- Integrates a MAT’s teaching and learning ambitions and financial resource
management into one approach. - Helps trusts understand their school staffing structures, curriculum plans and
associated spend. - Delivers the best curriculum a MAT can afford that meets the needs of pupils in its schools
- Ensures schools can be staffed efficiently and provides affordable class
sizes/groups. - Achieves educational success and financial sustainability.
