Benchmarking: A method used by school business leaders to beat themselves up. Previously used to compare healthy expenditure levels across similar schools, now this apocalyptic desert is the home to the skeletal remains of the costed school improvement plans of times gone by. Instead of using benchmarking data to compare and measure the impact of targeted and costed strategies, now finance folk use it to measure how long they can boil the bones of their meagre financial broths before the pan boils dry.
Budget share/General Annual Grant (GAG) funding: Starts life as the funding with which the government believes you should be able to run your school. Ends up as the much-reduced amount of money your school will end up with once every other beggar with a vested interest has taken a chunk of it. Think of it like a Ferrero Rocher of cash, handed to you with the shiny wrapper already removed, the nutty bit nibbled away and the chocolatey filling licked off. So just the nut then. The ambassador isn’t spoiling anyone with this offering.
Capital grant: Following the demise of the Building Schools for the Future programme, schools have relied on capital grants to fund repairs and refurbishments to their substantial building and infrastructure costs. As the national age and condition of our schools deteriorate, so the cost of maintaining them rises. Conversely, current capital funding will allow schools to purchase one tub of Polyfilla and a hammer per year with which to manage their capital works programmes.
Deficit: The place wherein resides the shortfall between government policy and reality. While most schools now find themselves thrown onto a shuttle bus hurtling towards this shadowland, when they arrive they will be told that they are not permitted to remain there, but nor will they be supplied with the ticket, bus fare, directions or any form of map showing them how to return. A challenge worthy of the most extreme Japanese game shown ever.
Financial forecast: Draw a pencil drawing of a stickman standing at the top of a very steep hill on the left-hand side of your paper. Then draw the steep downward slope of the hill as it descends to ground level. Continue the line going underground until you hit bedrock. Now draw an x and y axis at ground level. On the x axis divide the line into five sections numbered (left to right) 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021. On the y axis, draw a £ sign. This is your financial forecast.
Other income: An archaic term used to describe the additional funding streams previously available to schools to drive specific areas of school improvement. No longer in use for anything other than lettings income, insurance claims and cake sales. To visualise this concept, think of a matchbox stored in an aircraft hangar.
Recruitment costs: A bottomless pit which requires constant sacrificial offerings throughout the year upon the resignation of any member of staff. The return is usually hugely disproportionate to the investment paid out. Expect to run six adverts for teacher of science for every one application received, eight to 10 for every primary headteacher and consider buying a continuous billboard advertising hoarding on the nearest motorway for teachers of computer science.
Staffing costs: A beast that lives in your expenditure budget that will devour your entire income in one bite, leaving only a scattering of crumbs with which to run the rest of the school. Keep this beast fed, but ensure the rations are exact. Over or underfeeding can result in serious consequences. It can and will bite the hand that feeds it.
Supply costs: Otherwise known as a piece of string, length indeterminate. It’s pretty safe to assume that the piece of string should probably be very, very long, and very, very expensive. When profiling your supply costs spend, imagine your supply budget as a large bale of said string, start tipping the string down a deep well, a few feet at a time until all of the string is gone. Then order more string. Repeat ad nauseam.
Surplus: Now obsolete.
Hilary Goldsmith is director of finance and operations at Varndean School. She tweets at @sbl365
