The National Audit Office (NAO) has published a report which looks at the Department for Education’s (DfE) capability to support state-funded schools in managing the risks to their financial sustainability. The report assessed the following:
- the challenges to schools’ financial sustainability;
- the DfE’s understanding of, and support for, schools’ financial sustainability;
- how the DfE identifies and addresses the risk of financial failure in schools.
Overall, the report recognises that little progress has been made by the Department in its approach to support schools to make efficiencies. It concluded that “until more progress is made, we cannot conclude that the Department’s approach to managing the risks to schools’ financial sustainability is effective and providing value for money.”
In light of this, the NAO has made a series of recommendations to the DfE, some of which are outlined below:
- The DfE should move faster to set out how it envisages mainstream schools will achieve the necessary savings (£3.0 billion by 2019-20) and provide information and support for schools to do this.
- The DfE should work with the schools sector to provide evidence that school spending power can be reduced at the same time as educational outcomes are improved. This should be the fundamental priority for the DfE’s School Financial Health and Efficiency programme.
- The Education Funding Agency should improve its approach to overseeing and intervening in academies and maintained schools in order to prevent financial failure.