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 schools in MATs are applied within the ICFP analysis. Almost all MATs apply a central charge (often referred to as a ‘top slice’) of one sort or another. Some have a variable percentage charge of GAG, or of all government grants, or a standard fee per pupil. Whatever way the MAT decide to apply the charge, it will be recorded as part of the non-staffing spend in the AAR returns. Much of this non-staffing charge, however, relates to charges for staffing. This may be for the CEO and CFO, it may be for central finance and HR staff, it may even be for school improvement staff. These staff, however, re all providing services for the individual schools.

To balance out this central charge, which is recorded as a non-staffing charge but actually provides staffing, we take the central staffing costs for each category of staff and apportion it back to schools on the basis of pupil numbers. This approach means there is greater comparability between schools regardless of how the MAT is formed and which staffing costs are paid for directly by the school and what is paid for by the central MAT. (We are working on a new feature which will allow MATs to apportion their central staffing costs in a way that makes sense to them.)

Secondly, many MATs wish to set their own thresholds for their metrics. Some MATs will say, for instance, that our approach for our schools means the metrics aren’t directly comparable. For instance consider a MAT of ten primary schools, we will call it MAT A. MAT A believe in the importance of wraparound care at all of their schools and invest heavily in this service, investing much of their Pupil Premium to ensure that all pupils have access to the wraparound care. This means that their Non-Curriculum Support Staff costs are high in all their schools. This means they want to change the NCSS threshold across their schools by +1.5% above the average metric level generated from our API. We allow MATs to make these changes so that the metrics work for them.

Finally, MATs will want to both consolidate the metrics across their schools to give the position for the MAT, but will also want to compare their schools to identify where the largest opportunities are. Both these processes will provide key management information to the executive and to trustees to support their strategic decision making. We offer a recently launched Organisation Dashboard that provides all this information.

We haven’t solved all the issues for MATs yet and look forward to hearing about further functionality that MATs would like to help them improve their use of ICFP.