So, we finally have a date for the General Election. Campaigning from all political parties is underway, and in just a few weeks’ time we will know who is going to lead this country in the next parliament. However, the election can’t come soon enough for MAT leaders, with a number of key financial decisions up in the air.
Without question the biggest is the Teacher Pay Award, with confirmation that although the School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB) has now submitted its recommendations to the government for 2024-25, a response to the STRB’s recommendations will not be published during the pre-election period. In the meantime, trusts should have been advised that they should consider the government’s Schools’ costs: technical note to assist in setting budgets, which to quote CST directly is “hardly reassuring”.
No decision on teacher pay before the election has provoked an impassioned response from sector leaders, including Pepe Di’Iasio, General Secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL), who told Tes in another interview in May: “The implications of this delay are serious as it means that teachers and leaders have no clarity about what they will be paid when they come back after the summer break, and schools are unable to plan their budgets for next year with any confidence.”
Meanwhile, Schools Week has reported that up to 90% of schools wrestling with deficits in areas splitting £20 million “hardship funding” to help cover teacher pay rises have missed out on the extra cash.
Schools are also affected by the ‘pause’ in Condition Improvement Fund (CIF) funding. For trusts who have received a letter from DfE to advise them that their 2024-25 CIF project has been placed on hold while DfE conducts further due diligence, this means that no payments will be made whilst DfE undertake this process, in accordance with the CIF terms and conditions. This, of course, creates huge uncertainty for those schools and trusts affected.
In addition, the revised Academy Trust Handbook (ATH) will now be published after the election, and will require new ministerial approval, whilst the Budget Forecast Return (BFR) deadline remains set for Thursday 29th August.
Even before the election announcement, and the renewed uncertainty, figures analysed by the Education Policy Institute for Tes show the difficult choices facing trusts and schools owning to government ‘underfunding’. Amongst the headline figures, there has been a 42% jump in the number of MATs with reserves at levels seen as suggestive of “financial vulnerability”, whilst the individual stories of trusts featured in the article are largely worrying.
Today we are launching our MAT CFO Insights Survey, which seeks to better understand leaders’ hopes and fears ahead of the 2024-25 academic year. It ends with perhaps the biggest question of all: What is your single biggest ask of the incoming government to support MAT financial sustainability going forward? You can complete the survey, which is open until 28th June, here. The findings will be promoted in Tes and through other channels.
Despite the uncertainty around MAT finance at this time, having recently hosted a series of Customer Connect events up and down the country, we found CFOs, finance and business leaders in attendance to be stoic in their commitment to working through the pain points.
Whilst the identity of the new government, and the policies they will introduce, are unclear – what we do know is these are far better informed by listening to the sector and seeking to understand the reality ‘on the ground’, which in turn can help identify the support needed.
