Red Kite Learning Trust is a multi-academy trust made up of 14 schools in North and West Yorkshire, serving more than 9,750 children and young people and their families, from nursery to sixth form. The trust is “passionate about learning, providing a rich curriculum which releases potential and creates opportunity for all our pupils”, and to help support this important strategic mission has turned to IMP ICFP.
IMP ICFP, which supports trust-led integrated curriculum financial planning, aligns data-driven conversations between financial and curriculum leadership, enabling an integrated staffing model and multi-year ICFP planning. Red Kite has accessed the system since June 2023, having originally been involved in its piloting, and is already using the data as part of discussions for its three-year budget setting.
“Through IMP ICFP we understand our timetables and the make-up of our staff models,” explained Trust Finance Manager Chris Foster. “It has taken us six months to grasp the data we are putting in, and see what we are getting out, but now we are beginning to harvest and cleanse the data and can see the fruits of our labour. From our side, we know exactly what the product is capable of in supporting the trust.”
Highlighting benchmarking as “traditionally being a big challenge,” Chris outlined how IMP ICFP would fill that gap. “Department for Education tools are out-of-date as soon as they arrive, and nationally-collected data through Kreston benchmarks is not directly comparable to situations in your schools – as a sector we need to tease out more information, and national KPIs do not match with our context,” he said.
“IMP ICFP is the only tool I have come across that drives this type of data – if you do not have it, you need to ask loads of probing questions. We now have in black and white how much a subject costs, how much it costs to have a teacher in front of class, and can access more data than there has ever been. Before IMP ICFP we were reliant on spreadsheets, everything was very manual, which brought about inconsistencies and is not an efficient way of working.”
Chris, who is one of three Finance Managers in the trust supporting school-based SLT with their strategic finance, highlighted the rationale for effective ICFP. “Our objective is to give schools full autonomy on delivering the best education for their communities – but they are all very different,” he commented. “We see different curriculum resourcing strategies across the trust, with some schools focusing more on putting experienced teachers into the classroom and others relying more on early career teachers or higher level teaching assistants. ICFP is important for understanding the context, ethos and staffing model in any one school – essentially ‘why’ it is like that, for example deprivation and SEND factors – using that nuance for each school and looking through the data and running scenarios through IMP ICFP which can help us to understand what needs to change.”
For Chris, having each school “fully on board” with embedded ICFP is a target for the next 12 months. “IMP ICFP gives us the opportunity to look at options and think outside the box,” he said. “When looking at potential savings, it equips us with the knowledge to base decision-making around and this is important as budgets are as tight as they have ever been. Staff are any school’s biggest cost, but as a sector we do not always look at it that way and have not had any real analysis on, just basic KPIs such as teacher to pupil ratios. With IMP ICFP we can now get into the sub-cost of secondary subjects and sixth form, for example. It has so much to offer, and help us to refine what we do.”
Highlighting the “fantastic people” at IMP, Chris added: “I would absolutely recommend IMP to other trusts. IMP Planner, which we have been using since 2023, is one of the best software packages I have used, and I can see that IMP ICFP is the same and will be a super useful tool. The IMP team is great – so easy to talk to – and as education professionals specialising in academy finance and software development roles for many years they just get it. They know what we want out of it, and when we have ideas these are relayed and they can relate to their past experiences. The support and helpdesk is absolutely fantastic too. They solve our queries really quickly, and understand the roles we have.”
Chris concluded by offering the following advice to other trusts on their ICFP journey. “Everyone is at various stages of ICFP, but having IMP ICFP at the start of implementation makes it so much easier,” he said. “The potential to share data once it is solid, and integrated, is so helpful and will help to harvest data better for DfE returns. Schools may not have full finance expertise, but this is the benefit of the trust model: professionals who can show the actual cost of staff and time, which can then inform a decision on value for money in school. Schools may not be fully aware just how much giving an extra period to a member of staff is costing them, but with ICFP they can quantify it.”
Steve Howell, Commercial Director at Red Kite Learning Trust, summarised: “IMP are a fantastic strategic partner for Red Kite Learning Trust – their ICFP software is a game-changer for our sector.”
Case study developed: February 2024
