Correspondence

ESFA Update academies: 18 August 2021

Published 18 August 2021

This correspondence was withdrawn on 23 December 2022

This has been withdrawn as it’s out of date. Read the latest editions of ESFA Update for the latest news and information.

Applies to England

1. Latest information on coronavirus (COVID-19)

The Department for Education has published guidance about COVID-19 in educational settings for staff, parents and carers, pupils and students on GOV.UK.

Please check GOV.UK regularly for updates.

2. Information: academies accounts return 2020 to 2021 - updates and additional information requirements document

We have added an updates and additional information requirements document to the academies accounts return guidance page to help trusts and their auditors prepare for the accounts return later this year.

As in previous years there are a few amendments to the form, mainly to cover any new reporting requirements and to improve the user experience.

In summary, the main changes to this year’s accounts return are:

• addition of academy dashboards for academy level tables
• additional information provided on error messages when a validation is triggered
• updates to the losses and special payments table and the information required
• updates to the information required for COVID-19 funding
• off-payroll arrangements are to be included in “Number of employees whose emoluments exceeds £60k and £100k”
• reduced number of fields in the counterparty data section
• ESFA funded assets under construction section removed

Please review the document for detailed information on the changes and additional information requirements.

3. Your feedback: view my financial insights – research with alternative provision providers

ESFA and DfE are currently reviewing the experience of View my Financial Insights (VMFI) for alternative provision (AP) providers.

The researcher in the VMFI team would like to speak with school business professionals (eg CFOs, finance directors, finance managers) for AP providers to understand how the service can be improved to meet your needs:

• research sessions will take place the week commencing 23 August and 6 September 2021
• each session will be conducted over Microsoft Teams and will last up to 45 minutes
• all responses will be anonymised

Please register your interest by 27 August 2021 and a researcher will be in touch with more information.

4. Information: domestic abuse statutory guidance consultation launched

Following Royal Assent of the Domestic Abuse Act 2021, the Home Office are consulting on draft domestic abuse statutory guidance which will support the implementation of sections 1 to 3 of the Domestic Abuse Act, which cover the definitions of domestic abuse and the recognition of children as victims of domestic abuse.   The aim is to provide guidance and support to frontline professionals who have responsibility for safeguarding and supporting victims of domestic abuse, including both adult and child victims.  

The consultation is aimed at a wide range of professionals, including, amongst others, those who work in:

• local authorities
• early years
• childcare and education settings (including schools, colleges and higher education)
• children’s social care  

Further details, including the draft guidance document and how to respond to the consultation can be found on GOV.UK. The consultation closes at 11.45pm on Tuesday 14 September 2021.

5. Information: post-16 monitoring plan for the 2021 to 2022 funding year

We have published the post-16 monitoring plan for the 2021 to 2022 funding year. Following user feedback, we have combined the monitoring plan and our reports dashboard user guide into a single piece of guidance in HTML format. This means you can now find all the information on each report in a single space; it also means that you do not have to wait until we release the R04 reports in December to see the relevant guidance.

While the first dataset for the year will be published after R04 (December), this year we will also publish School Census data within the monitoring dashboard in the following spring, enabling a comprehensive in-year analysis of young peoples’ funding for the first time. We are developing a support offer for providers that submit the School Census and have not previously been directly engaged by monitoring and will communicate this in the autumn.