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| TITLE | DESCRIPTION | WHO |
Introduction to the Standard
| This document outlines what a Financial Management Standard is, how to use it and how to use the toolkit. | |
| Overview of the Financial Management Standard | This provides an index sheet for each statement in the Financial Management Standard. These statements are divided into five sections: leadership and governance; people management; policy and strategy; partnership and resources; processes. | |
| Guide to the toolkit | This expands on each of the statements in the Financial Management Standard and provides a link the relevant Financial Management summary statements and the resources available in the toolkit. | |
| Standard and evaluation tools | This document provides an evaluation tool that allows school leaders and governing bodies to assess the current state of their financial management practices against the Financial Management Standard. This document can be used by individuals with responsibility for financial management or by a team, eg the governing body finance committee and/or the senior leadership team. | |
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| TITLE | DESCRIPTION | CONTENTS | WHO |
| Leadership and governance Standard | Good financial management requires clear leadership and effective governance. The leadership and governance standards deal with leadership and governing body roles and requirements with regard to financial management. It includes summaries of good practice in the development of school plans and policies. | Role of the headteacher | |
| Role of the governing body and its committees | |
| Role of the bursar | |
| Governance and accountability | |
| The school development plan | |
| Whistle-blowing policy | |
| Culture management | |
| People management standard | Schools are responsible for significant amounts of public money. It is important, therefore, that the school has the requisite number of staff, with the necessary financial management competencies. It is equally important that the school is able to resource, preferably within the governing body, high degrees of financial management competency in order to enable the governing body and the headteacher to carry out their statutory responsibilities. | Staff financial management competencies and qualifications | |
| Governing body financial management competencies and qualifications | |
| Governors and staff recruitment | |
| Policy and strategy standard | Policy and Strategy links the user to a number of available related resources. Of particular interest is the link to the DfES Financial Benchmarking Tool. (There is also a link to this on the front page of this website.) | Setting the annual budget | |
| Option appraisal | |
| Risk management | |
| Insurance for schools | |
| Achieving best value | |
| Benchmarking | |
| Partnership and resources standard | This section links to documents designed to help the school use its resources efficiently and effectively and suggests way as to how the school might access additional resources through partnerships and other arrangements. | Procurement and supplier management | |
| Income sources | |
| Staff deployment | |
| Managing premises | |
| ICT development plans | |
| Managing relations with LEAs and other partners | |
| Processes standard | Financial management requires effective processes for budgeting, monitoring, control and reporting. This is to ensure that resources are used wisely, waste is minimised and that there are robust practices to safeguard against fraud. These documents provide good practice guidance on these issues. | Budgeting, monitoring and reporting | |
| Internal financial controls | |
, governors, particularly those on finance committees 
, and bursars, including school finance officers, school accounting officers and financial directors 
.
