School Resource Management Self-Assessment Tool

School resource management assessment tools

The Department for Education (DfE) has developed financial tools that can help schools check they are meeting the basic standards necessary to achieve a good level of financial health and resource management.

These are the schools financial value standard (SFVS) for maintained schools and school resource management self-assessment tool for academies. It is now mandatory for all schools to use these tools on an annual basis.

What are the tools?

These tools both include a checklist and a dashboard.

The checklist asks questions of governing bodies in 6 areas of resource management. It provides clarification for each question, examples of good practice, and details of further support available to assist schools in addressing specific issues.

The dashboard shows how a school’s data compares to thresholds on a range of statistics identified by the DfE as indicators of good resource management and outcomes. It provides explanations of each of the indicators and helps schools to fill in their data and understand the results.

What do I need to do next?

Local authority maintained schools must submit the SFVS annually to their local authority. Local authorities use this information to inform their programme of financial assessment and audit. The tool has been updated for 2019-20 to include the dashboard and to refocus the checklist on resource management.

The school resource management self-assessment tool for academies was first published in September 2018. From 2019/20 completion of the tool is a mandatory requirement, and all academy trusts must submit their first return by 14 November 2019.

Contact school.resourcemanagement@education.gov.uk if you have questions or feedback on the tools.