It’s almost the start of April, which marks the start of the financial year for most schools, why not get a head start on your budget planning.
Schools are expected to prepare forecasts for a period of three years, and when doing so should take into consideration any known variants that may occur during this time.
Try not to let this weigh you down, we know crunching numbers may not seem like the most exciting task in your job role, but solidifying your budget strategy will allow you to work on your schools improvement plan. Think about what you would like to do if you had unlimited money (deck out every room with the entire Spaceforme range?) and then prioritise what you can do with the budget that you have.
Let’s take a look at these three steps for preparing a budget.
Firstly, review your past performance. You can use previous years’ budget reports to analyse how accurate the budget plan was in comparison to the final amount spent, identify areas of overspending – and examine whether this was worthwhile. It is also a good idea to refer back to past exam results and compare those with your budget strategy for that year, this will shed light on any areas that may need extra funding and resources to improve results.
Step two is to plan for requirement, this step will focus on determining what the school will require going forward. To do this take a look at previous data and scope out areas where resources may have fallen short. Also take a look at the schools growth trajectory, have the class sizes and pupil numbers increased? Do you need more staff? Have basic costs increased? All of these factors will have an effect on your budget plan.
The final step is to develop a budgetary forecast, looking three to five years ahead. Although it will be near impossible to accurately predict changes in things like funding and staffing requirements, you can use previous years figures to spot any patterns that may continue to develop and base your forecast on those, as well as hypotheticals. You should try to develop as many scenarios as possible to be able to assess the financial impact of different circumstances.
It is a good idea to immerse yourself in the educational community, both locally and nationally to help to provide insight on future changes.
Once your budget has been approved it is time to implement it. You should ensure that you are monitoring your financials on a monthly basis to identify areas that haven’t aligned with your budget plan and also make the process easier when it comes to submitting end of year budget reports.
We hope you found this helpful, why not check out our classroom designer to bring your vision to life!