Foreword by David Withey, Chief Executive of the Education and Skills Funding Agency
Foreword by David Withey, Chief Executive of the Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA).
Following the decision of the Office for National Statistics to classify the English college sector to central government from 29 November 2022, the Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) and Department for Education (DfE) worked with the sector to provide clarity on the impact of those changes.
Inevitably, as with any change of this magnitude, the change introduced a degree of uncertainty. However, much remained unchanged in the governance and oversight arrangements for the sector – college corporations remain statutory bodies and exempt charities, with the Secretary of State for Education as the principal charity regulator, are still run by a corporation of governors with the status of charity trustees, and colleges’ principal legal relationship with DfE is governed by an accountability agreement. Crucially, colleges remain central to the government’s ambition to transform the skills base of the country.
Nevertheless, one significant adjustment related to financial management – as part of the public sector, colleges must now adhere to the government sector’s spending rules set out in Managing public money, which is the publication that sets out the requirements for all central government bodies.
ESFA has a significant role to play in assuring Parliament and our ministers that these rules are being applied correctly, and the most important way we do so is through providing certainty to the sector on what the new requirements are and how they apply. We also do this by supporting the sector in the application of these rules in as streamlined and simple a way as possible.
This handbook aims to do exactly that. It seeks to help colleges meet the requirements placed on them by bringing together the key financial requirements in a single place. It does not replace the college framework documents ESFA currently produces each year – the College accounts direction, College financial planning handbook, and Post-16 audit code of practice (P16ACOP) – but sits alongside them in what we hope is a cohesive suite of documents that makes it easy for colleges to know what they need to do, and do it well.
This handbook has been developed alongside representatives from the sector and I would like to thank those representatives for their help in developing the document. Ultimately, this handbook is for the sector and so we have framed it in a way that we hope will deliver that goal. This has resulted in a principles-based approach rather than a checklist-based one. The handbook communicates what needs to be done rather than how it should be done. It aims also to assist both those practitioners that have a considerable degree of sector-specific expertise and those new to the sector.
Our intention is that we will refresh the handbook annually to capture legal and regulatory changes, best practice, and wider developments in the sector as appropriate. That also gives us an opportunity to continue to engage with the sector to make sure it provides the certainty that we seek. We welcome any feedback users may have.
Chief Executive, Education and Skills Funding Agency