Benchmarking
Schools are responsible for demonstrating value for money to parents, auditors and regulators by showing that this money is being well spent to achieve the best outcomes for children.
One way in which schools can ensure that resources are being used effectively is to compare finances through benchmarking.
Benefits and Requirements of Benchmarking
- Focus on planning and managing your budget
- Identify areas for improvement
- Set targets for improvement
- Achieve best value quality vs cost
- Achieve value for money quality vs cost
- Improve the effectiveness of your expenditure to improve performance
- Deliver educational services to a defined standard
Benchmarking your expenditure can help lock your school into a cycle of continuous improvement and to develop a culture where it is easier to question the norm and make changes. Benchmarking is not used solely to focus on reducing costs but to also improve the quality and impact of your school’s services.
All maintained schools must complete and submit the Schools Financial Value Standard (SFVS) annually. Benchmarking is a key part of meeting SFVS.
Schools can access their data by clicking on the link below and follow the guidelines for setting up a new account. If you need support in completing the financial benchmarking for your school, we are offering training to all maintained schools, please contact us for details.
Alternatively, we can produce a benchmarking report and graphs for your school. We produce these annually for all of the schools we support, once the latest data is available, this will usually be in December. For schools that we do not support the price is £75 per request.
