Featured Blog Posts
Friday, March 14, 2025
What is the ‘curriculum’ element of Integrated Curriculum and Financial Planning?
The idea of ICFP is that it generates metrics which act as ‘question starters’ for the school. For instance, if …
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Friday, February 21, 2025
Why have we developed ICFP Software?
Integrated Curriculum and Financial Planning (ICFP) has been a central element of our work for many years; both the work …
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Sunday, February 16, 2025
ICFP and Budget Assumptions
Budgeting is a gloriously messy process. Across the country finance professionals are doing what seems unnatural for such a process …
Read MoreFriday, March 14, 2025
Peter Tomkins
What is the ‘curriculum’ element of Integrated Curriculum and Financial Planning?
The idea of ICFP is that it generates metrics which act as ‘question starters’ for the school. For instance, if the school is spending above …
Read moreFriday, February 21, 2025
Peter Tomkins
Why have we developed ICFP Software?
Integrated Curriculum and Financial Planning (ICFP) has been a central element of our work for many years; both the work we and our consultants do …
Read moreSunday, February 16, 2025
Peter Tomkins
ICFP and Budget Assumptions
Budgeting is a gloriously messy process. Across the country finance professionals are doing what seems unnatural for such a process and making guesses about what …
Read moreWednesday, February 12, 2025
Peter Tomkins
How can ICFP help with assessing central trust costs?
Unlike other ICFP tools, ICFP.school redistributes the central trust costs to schools so it is possible to assess the efficiency of the both the school …
Read moreMonday, February 10, 2025
Peter Tomkins
How important is ICFP when you set your budget?
Somehow I seem to have become a reluctant budgeting and financial planning guru. Not only have I, with input from a panel of SRMAs, written …
Read moreFriday, January 17, 2025
Peter Tomkins
SEND – How can ICFP help?
It’s time to talk about SEND. The increase in SEND, both in terms of pupil numbers and need, is probably the greatest challenge that schools …
Read moreSunday, January 05, 2025
Peter Tomkins
Why is ICFP important for setting the budget?
The starting point for budgeting really should be asking the following question: how can I use my finite financial resources so that it has the …
Read moreSunday, December 15, 2024
Peter Tomkins
ICFP in Multi-Academy Trusts (MATs)
Multi-Academy Trusts (MATs) provide some challenges to Integrated Curriculum and Financial Planning (ICFP). The first is how we ensure that all the costs associated with …
Read moreMonday, December 02, 2024
Peter Tomkins
Thresholds, benchmarks and metric ranges
The longer you spend in education – and I am just shy of forty years as a teacher, headteacher, consultant and director of TSO Education …
Read moreSunday, December 01, 2024
Peter Tomkins
Does ICFP work for primary schools?
I used to hear the above question all the time and I thought we’d moved past it until I was brought up short in a …
Read moreWednesday, November 20, 2024
Peter Tomkins
What is the relationship between ICFP and timetabling?
Integrated Curriculum and Financial Planning (ICFP) informs the timetabling process, but is not part of the process. We have noticed that quite a lot of …
Read moreMonday, November 18, 2024
Peter Tomkins
Small schools and ICFP
As a governor, and chair of finance, in a small, LA maintained village primary school where numbers are fluctuating between around 40 and 60 I …
Read moreSunday, November 17, 2024
Peter Tomkins
Can I use ICFP metrics as KPIs?
The Academy Trust Handbook used to mandate Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) as an element of monthly management accounts; this was removed from the 2023 edition …
Read moreSunday, November 10, 2024
Peter Tomkins
Is Integrated Curriculum and Financial Planning better than Curriculum Led Financial Planning
The short answer is no. The longer answer is that they are basically the same process, just with slightly different titles. Integrated Curriculum and Financial …
Read moreSaturday, November 09, 2024
Peter Tomkins
Does ICFP work for special schools?
The challenge of using integrated curriculum and financial planning (ICFP) with special schools is the diversity of the schools. Different special schools focus on a …
Read moreWednesday, November 06, 2024
Peter Tomkins
Is it best to use an ICFP tool?
It is not unusual to hear people argue that using a tool to generate your Integrated Curriculum and Financial Planning data actually disempowers you. The …
Read moreFriday, November 01, 2024
Peter Tomkins
ICFP Metrics – Now what?
Calculating the integrated curriculum and financial planning metrics are the easy part of the process, particularly when you use a tool like ICFP.school. The more …
Read moreFriday, October 25, 2024
Peter Tomkins
Does ICFP work in all school phases?
The short answer is that ICFP works in all types and phases of school, although the larger the class of school the more useful the …
Read moreFriday, October 25, 2024
Peter Tomkins
ICFP vs Benchmarking
Integrated Curriculum and Financial Planning can sometimes be dismissed as just a rather fancy name for benchmarking, but they are two very different processes. The …
Read moreFriday, October 25, 2024
Peter Tomkins
Why use ICFP?
The ICFP process is about providing useful management information to school leaders and governors/trustees. It is not, much to some leaders’ surprise, about levelling all …
Read moreFriday, October 25, 2024
Peter Tomkins
Is ICFP too broad?
Some approaches to ICFP don’t differentiate between schools on the basis of contextual features like geographical area, socio-economic background or outcomes. The ICFP.school dashboard allows …
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