This budget planning checklist and calendar set is designed to help you with staying on top of managing your budget across the school year. The editable budget planning checklist has suggested tasks to attend to when planning your next budget, including for school improvement planning, curriculum budgeting and expenditure, staffing and payroll, pupil premium and SEND. There are also suggestions for when to follow up and monitor each element across the school year. The accompanying calendar provides a month-by-month overview, giving you a quick and easy breakdown of what to explore each month when it comes to monitoring your budget - you could print it out and pin it to your noticeboard as a handy reminder (plus there’s a print-friendly version included too). The budget planning checklist is an editable Word (.docx) document and the calendar is in PDF format.

This handy 18-page editable document (.docx format) is designed to help school finance governors to support and challenge their setting’s headteacher, principal or academy head when planning and setting the school budget. It contains reflective questions to be used in a constructive dialogue in the following areas: Budget planning Budget risk factors, contingency and compliance Income School improvement Contracts and benchmarking Staffing Pupil numbers and class sizes Pupil premium and SEND Deficit and recovery planning (use if applicable to your setting) Budget variation For each question, there’s space to note any discussion outcomes as well as the evidence you’ve gathered to support budget planning decisions. It can be used by both maintained schools and academies where governors or local board members support the academy’s headteacher to plan the budget. Whether you’re a finance link governor, the chair of a governor finance committee or a school leader looking to support your governors, this checklist allows you to work collaboratively and ensure that governors are fulfilling one of the governing body’s core functions of ensuring the sound, proper and effective use of the school’s financial resources.

This handy bundle focuses on exploring your financial management skills in order to effectively manage your school budget. Designed for headteachers, business managers or anyone with responsibility for finance in schools, the three resources in this pack can help you determine your current level of understanding about school budget management and, crucially, what knowledge and skills you need to develop to manage the budget effectively. The pack contains: School Budget Management Skills Audit and Self-Evaluation - This 16-page editable Word document contains a wealth of reflective questions that you can work through to determine your current depth of understanding in all areas of school budget management. School Finance Role Handover Checklist - This checklist can be used as a handover document when taking on a role that includes school budget management and covers a range of tasks you may wish to complete, including getting set up on finance management systems, learning about the current budgetary picture and understanding any financial constraints the school is facing. School Finance Glossary - For those new to school finance management, understanding the associated vocabulary, terminology and acronyms can be one of the biggest hurdles to overcome! Written in an easy-to-digest manner, you can keep this glossary to hand when building your skills in school budget management. For this reason, it’s ideal for new heads, academy headteachers or anyone stepping into school budget management for the first time. The skills audit and handover checklist are editable and in Word .docx format while the school finance glossary is in a PDF format.

While low pupil numbers and high staffing costs have a large impact on the budget, there are ways to make cost savings across other, smaller areas which can add up to large gains. This 13-page toolkit explores maximising income and minimising expenditure across key areas such as procurement, resourcing the curriculum, premises and facilities management, catering and more. Headteachers, principals, academy heads, executive heads or anyone with responsibility and oversight of a school budget will find this pack extremely useful, particularly if cost savings need to be made to create a sustainable budget. This resource is fully editable and is in a Word .docx format.

Often, staffing and supporting the needs of pupils with SEND are closely intertwined but this can have cost implications that are challenging to manage. This 11-page toolkit helps you to explore SEND across your setting while considering the associated staffing costs and potential areas for making savings, including a whole-school understanding of how to use quality first teaching strategies effectively, exploring how individual and group-based interventions can help you make savings without reducing quality and considering if there are ways to support pupils with SEND without solely relying on utilising support staff. Headteachers, principals, academy heads, executive heads or anyone with responsibility and oversight of a school budget will find this pack extremely useful, particularly if cost savings need to be made to create a sustainable budget. The resource is fully editable and is in a Word .docx format.

With increases to staff pay and pensions not always being accounted for in the funding schools receive, spiralling staff costs can heavily impact your budget. This 11-page toolkit helps you explore your staffing structure vs. the impact they have, how to reduce costs associated with CPD and recruitment without affecting the quality of teaching and learning, and potential ways to reduce supply costs. It’ll help you to consider whether you can utilise changes to staffing hours and contracts to benefit both staff members and your setting and there is a section on whether making redundancies is a serious consideration you need explore further. Headteachers, principals, academy heads, executive heads or anyone with responsibility and oversight of a school budget will find this pack extremely useful, particularly if cost savings need to be made to create a sustainable budget. The resource is full editable and is in a Word .docx format.

This 14-page document explores one of the most challenging areas to combat: falling pupil numbers on roll. It’ll help you explore and respond to elements outside of your control (such as falling birth rates) and those within your control, such as your school’s unique selling points, reputation and visibility. With guidance and reflective questions around boosting pupil numbers, improving marketing strategies and reducing the numbers of pupils leaving your roll, it’ll allow you to identify strategies to mitigate the effects on your budget of having low pupil numbers on roll. Headteachers, principals, academy heads, executive heads or anyone with responsibility and oversight of a school budget will find this pack extremely useful, particularly if cost savings need to be made to create a sustainable budget. The resource is fully editable and is in Word .docx format.

This supportive bundle, designed for headteachers, principals and school business managers, gives you four cost saving toolkits that you can utilise to explore how to maximise income coming into your school as well as reduce unnecessary costs. Each toolkit covers a key pain point in school budget management: low pupils numbers high staffing costs managing SEND and linked budgetary costs planning an effective and efficient school budget. These provide ideas and reflective questions to work through in order to identify cost-saving measures, supporting your thought process when managing and balancing your entire school budget. Headteachers, principals, academy heads, executive heads or anyone with responsibility and oversight of a school budget will find this pack extremely useful, particularly if cost savings need to be made to create a sustainable budget. All documents are fully editable and in Word .docx format.

This full school budget management pack is perfect for any school leader who holds responsibility for the management of school finances, such as the headteacher, principal, academy head, school business manager (SBM) or another person in a similar role. The pack contains three distinct strands to support you: Cost saving toolkits to help you solve common problems when balancing your budget, including how to minimise expenditure and maximise income in different areas, including low pupil numbers, high staffing costs, managing the SEND budget while supporting pupil needs and planning an efficient and effective budget. Financial management skills-based support to help you understand key terminology and concepts linked to budget management and identify where you may need further skill development. This includes a finance management skills self-evaluation, a schools finance glossary and finance role handover checklist. Budget planning support, including ideas for finance governors when it comes to their role in budget planning and a handy budget planning checklist and calendar to help you stay on track throughout the year. This pack is ideal for those who are new to finances and budget management in schools but it can equally be used by experienced school leaders who are seeking further support. All resources are editable and in Word .docx format except for the school finance glossary and school finance calendar, which are in PDF format.

This bundle is perfect for headteachers, trust leaders, governance professionals and chairs of governors who wish to support governors or local board members to gain a clearer understanding of their roles and responsibilities as part of a school’s governing body. The 10 editable role and responsibilities templates will help your governing board to gain a clearer picture of the types of tasks they should be undertaking as part of their governor role, including how their actions should have a strategic (rather than operational) focus. This includes suggestions for the policies they should understand, which members of staff they should build strong relationships with and the aspects that are unique to that individual link governor role. Each template is fully editable, allowing you to customise, amend and agree the role and responsibilities with each link governor, with the option to utilise these as a governor role terms of reference document if you wish. For more governance resources, visit our website - honeyguide-sls.co.uk

This bundle is perfect for headteachers, trust leaders, governance professionals and SLT members who wish to be consistent in the way they report information to their governing board. The 12 editable reporting templates will help your governing board to gain a clearer picture in each of the areas, which include school finance, safeguarding, subject reports, wellbeing, pupil premium and more. Each template contains space for data and commentary, allowing governors to build a picture of the school’s current position and the reasons behind this. Regular reports to the relevant governor committees, the full governing board or your local board members allows all of your governors to make more effective strategic decisions because they’ll hold a deeper understanding of the school. It can also support governors to share how they hold school leadership to account to ensure compliance, which is a crucial part of the Ofsted leadership and management judgement and a key feature of an effective governing board. For more governance resources, visit our website - honeyguide-sls.co.uk

This pack is perfect for anyone looking to support school governors, such as headteachers, trust leaders, governance professionals, SLT or a chair of governors. The 14 comprehensive and editable audit templates will help your governing board to gain a deeper understanding of your setting’s current strengths and areas for improvement, including school finance, curriculum and outcomes, safeguarding and more. This allows your link governors to make more effective strategic decisions because they hold a deeper understanding of the school and can also support governors to share how they hold school leadership to account to ensure compliance, which is a crucial part of the Ofsted leadership and management judgement and a key feature of an effective governing board. For support with a specific link governor role, these audits are also available in our individual link governor support packs. These packs include the relevant audit(s) plus report to governor templates and a role and responsibilities document. For further governance resources, visit our website - honeyguide-sls.co.uk

This pack is perfect for staff, pupil and community welfare link governors or anyone looking to support a welfare and wellbeing governor, such as headteachers, trust leaders, governance professionals, SENDCOs, pastoral leads or a chair of governors. With three comprehensive, editable resources - a staff workload and wellbeing audit for governors, a school wellbeing report to governors template and a staff, pupil and community welfare link governor roles and responsibilities document - this pack will support governors who are new to role or in cases where the staff and pupil wellbeing governor needs more structure and support in order to be highly effective in their role. For further governance resources, visit our website - honeyguide-sls.co.uk

This pack is perfect for health and safety link governors or anyone looking to support a health and safety governor with their role, such as headteachers, trust leaders, governance professionals, premises managers, site agents or a chair of governors. With three comprehensive, editable resources - a health and safety audit for governors, a health and safety report to governors template and a health and safety link governor roles and responsibilities document - this pack will support governors who are new to role or in cases where the H&S governor needs more structure and support in order to be highly effective in their role. For further governance resources, visit our website - www.honeyguide-sls.co.uk

This flexible pack is perfect for SEND link governors or anyone looking to support a special educational needs and disabilities governor, such as headteachers, trust leaders, governance professionals, SENDCOs or a chair of governors. With four comprehensive, editable resources - a SEND audit for governors, an equality and accessibility audit for governors, a SEND report to governors template and a SEND link governor roles and responsibilities document - this pack will support governors who are new to role or in cases where the SEND and inclusion governor needs more structure and support in order to be highly effective in their role. For further governance resources, visit our website - honeyguide-sls.co.uk

This flexible pack is perfect for safeguarding link governors or anyone looking to support a safeguarding governor with their role, such as headteachers, trust leaders, governance professionals, DSLs or a chair of governors. With three comprehensive, editable resources - a safeguarding audit for governors, a safeguarding report to governors template and a safeguarding link governor roles and responsibilities document - this pack will support governors who are new to role or in cases where the safeguarding governor needs more structure and support in order to be highly effective in their role. For further governance resources, visit our website - honeyguide-sls.co.uk

This flexible pack is perfect for pupil premium link governors or anyone looking to support a pupil premium governor or governor with oversight of disadvantaged pupils with their role, such as headteachers, trust leaders, governance professionals, pupil premium (PP) leads or a chair of governors. With four comprehensive, editable resources - a pupil premium and disadvantaged pupils audit for governors, a pupil premium report to governors template, a looked after children report to governors template and a pupil premium link governor roles and responsibilities document - this pack will support governors who are new to role or in cases where the pupil premium governor needs more structure and support in order to be highly effective in their role. For further governance resources, visit our website - honeyguide-sls.co.uk

This flexible pack is perfect for GDPR link governors or anyone looking to support a data protection governor with their role, such as headteachers, trust leaders, governance professionals, data protection officers (DPOs) or a chair of governors. With three comprehensive, editable resources - a GDPR audit for governors, a data protection report to governors template and a GDPR link governor roles and responsibilities document - this pack will support governors who are new to role or in cases where the GDPR governor needs more structure and support in order to be highly effective in their role. For further governance resources, visit our website - honeyguide-sls.co.uk

This flexible pack is perfect for finance link governors or anyone looking to support a finance governor with their role, such as headteachers, trust leaders, governance professionals, school business managers (SBMs) or a chair of governors. With three comprehensive, editable resources - a finance audit for governors, a finance report to governors template and a finance link governor roles and responsibilities document - this pack will support governors who are new to role or in cases where the finance governor needs more structure and support in order to be highly effective in their role. For further governance resources, visit our website - honeyguide-sls.co.uk

This flexible pack is perfect for curriculum and quality of education link governors or anyone looking to support a curriculum governor with their role, such as headteachers, trust leaders, governance professionals, curriculum leads or a chair of governors. With five comprehensive, editable resources - a curriculum audit for governors, an EYFS audit for governors, a subject report to governors template, an EYFS report to governors template and a curriculum link governor roles and responsibilities document - this pack will support governors who are new to role or in cases where the curriculum governor needs more structure and support in order to be highly effective in their role. You can find more governor resources by visiting our website - honeyguide-sls.co.uk