Since January, SRMAs have provided impartial, expert
business advice to schools and academy trusts. This
includes how to make best use of their revenue and
capital resources to deliver educational outcomes and
contribute to whole-school improvement.
ESFA prioritises those schools/trusts that will benefit
the most from this support. SRMAs then work through
their financial information to identify ways to improve
how they deploy staff or make more effective use of
non-staff resources.
SRMAs also consider whether the trust or school uses an
integrated curriculum and financial planning (ICFP)
approach and how they carry this out.
So far, the results have been encouraging and SRMAs
have been well received by the schools and trusts in
the pilot who can see the real value of this service.
We are now in a position where we want to roll this
service out more widely. To do this, we will be
tendering for:
- Organisations to manage the supply of SRMAs.
- An organisation to develop and deliver induction
and an accreditation process.
Suppliers of the management and supply contract will
undertake activities including:
- identify potential SRMAs to go through an induction
and accreditation process
- manage deployment of SRMAs throughout the contract
period
- maintain a record of accredited SRMAs throughout
the contract period, informing ESFA of any changes
- match SRMAs to monthly ESFA deployment commissions
- manage the contracts and payments to SRMAs or their
employers
- liaise with ESFA on progress of SRMAs and any
issues that arise during the contract period
SRMAs must have at least 2 years’ experience of school
business management or financial management. They must
have a good understanding of how the school system
works. Experience as an accountant, school business
professional, or similar role is desirable as is
specialist experience in the school sector including,
but not limited to, estates management, HR and
procurement.
The key activities under the accreditation contract
will be to:
- develop and deliver induction sessions for
potential SRMAs identified by the winners of the
management and supply contract
- develop and deliver a robust accreditation process,
testing the candidates’ understanding of strategic
school finances and the integrated curriculum financial
planning (ICFP) approach
ESFA will be tendering for these services over the
summer and expects to release the documentation later
in July. We will run the tender process through the
Bravo e-Procurement tool.
We will only make the tender documentation available
through Bravo at the launch of the procurement.
This is an exciting opportunity. If you are interested
in bidding, you can register on the Bravo
e-procurement system now in advance of the
tender launch.
