Guidance

The school resource management advisers (SRMA) programme

Updated 16 April 2025

Applies to England

About school resource management advisers

School resource management advisers (SRMAs) are independent advisers – not employed directly by the Department for Education (DfE) – with significant experience in managing resources in the education sector.

All SRMAs have been through an accreditation process, currently run by Education Performance Improvement (EPI). SRMAs are trained to look at the resources available to schools and trusts and recommend more efficient ways to provide the highest possible education standards and better life chances for children.

SRMAs may be:

• practising school business managers and school leaders
• currently working in schools or academy trusts
• consultants working for themselves or an education consultancy organisation

SRMAs offer peer-to-peer support and challenge to school leaders as a critical friend and an empathetic ear. They are not auditors or inspectors. All SRMAs are linked with one of the SRMA suppliers: North Yorkshire Council (NYC) or School Business Services (SBS).

Each SRMA supplier, and the SRMAs working with it, is legally bound to maintain confidentiality and comply with data protection rules while carrying out deployments. You can view the contracts DfE has in place with suppliers to recruit and manage SRMAs and provide the accreditation programme for new SRMA candidates.

SRMA visits are free for all schools and trusts. They are funded by DfE. Local authorities must confirm approval for all visits to local authority maintained schools before an SRMA is deployed. Contact the DfE.SRMA@education.gov.uk with any questions or to request a visit for your school.

Purpose and overview of an SRMA visit

The SRMA offer is open to all schools. Visits support schools to make best use of available resources to set children up for life, work and the future.

In all cases, you will work with a named DfE delivery lead, who will commission the visit on your behalf and act as a point of contact for you and the SRMA. Local authority deployments will usually involve more than one school, but the SRMA will visit and work with each school individually.

There are several options for an SRMA visit and various ways an SRMA could support you. Your delivery lead can talk through which will be most suitable for your setting.

Standard visit

We suggest a standard, comprehensive SRMA review for schools and trusts that have not previously had an SRMA visit. The adviser will look at all your:

• financial data
• key metrics
• overall approach to resource management, including whether you practise integrated curriculum and financial planning (ICFP)

Standard visits will still be tailored to individual needs and can also include specific areas of focus agreed at the outset. The adviser will arrange a series of meetings with key individuals to understand your context and priorities and your approach to financial governance. They will prepare a report for your leadership team, setting out their analysis and recommendations to consider.

Bespoke visit

A bespoke visit is one in which the SRMA can work with you on one or 2 specific areas. This is available to all schools, although it may be more suitable for those that have already had a standard review and now want to focus on a specific issue.

The visit will be related to finance or resource management. Examples may include:

• support to revise a budget plan
• advice and support with choosing a new finance system
• advice on building a central team to support trust growth
• support introducing ICFP to trustees

At the end of each deployment, the SRMA will discuss their findings with you. It is up to each trust, and each local authority maintained school in collaboration with its local authority, to decide which recommendations to take forward.

SRMAs produce a report for each deployment. Comprehensive deployment reports follow a standard format and will include key efficiency metrics, the SRMA’s analysis and their recommendations based on their review. The content and format of bespoke deployment reports will vary depending on the focus of the visit. All reports will be tailored to your specific context.

For deployments involving local authority maintained schools, the local authority can ask for a summary report. This is a separate report, written specifically for the local authority. It may identify good practice and can include local authority level recommendations and opportunities for the local authority to consider. The SRMA will arrange separate meetings with the local authority to consider how the team approaches budget monitoring with its schools, and the extent to which the local authority uses ICFP.

All reports are quality assured to ensure they are clear and factually accurate. Once finalised, the DfE delivery lead will send the report to the chair of trustees and the accounting officer (for academy trusts) or to the local authority to send on to the school (for local authority maintained schools). We aim to share reports within 3 to 4 weeks of your final meeting with the SRMA.

All deployments include a follow-up meeting with an SRMA 6 months after you receive the SRMA’s report. This is an opportunity to:

• discuss progress and next steps
• ask any questions
• consider whether any further support would be helpful

At the same time, we will send out an evaluation workbook for you to complete. This gathers feedback and helps DfE measure the impact of the programme to ensure it continues to meet the needs of schools.

Most deployments take around 3 months from the initial commissioning request to receiving the SRMA’s completed report. The SRMA will usually spend 1 to 3 days visiting you and will arrange other virtual meetings over the course of the deployment as needed. DfE aims to send you the SRMA’s completed report within a month of their final meeting with you.

Before an SRMA deployment starts

Once a deployment has been agreed, DfE will commission an SRMA from one of our suppliers: NYC or SBS.

For deployments to local authority maintained schools, DfE asks each school to complete a data information sheet in collaboration with the local authority. This helps us commission the most suitable SRMA.

The DfE delivery lead will contact you to confirm the allocated SRMA’s name and check there are no conflicts of interest. Conflicts of interest are rare. Examples include situations where a school or trust employs a close relative of the SRMA, or that the SRMA was previously employed at the school or trust.

SRMAs must confirm a start date for each deployment within 2 weeks of accepting a commission. Once you have confirmed there is no conflict of interest, your allocated SRMA will make contact to agree dates for visits and meetings.

We encourage SRMAs to use the DfE financial benchmarking and insights tool to get an initial overview of a school or trust’s finances. The tool compares a setting’s data with 30 similar settings and allows users to filter characteristics to create custom comparisons.

The DfE delivery lead will brief the SRMA on the background of your trust or school and highlight any key areas of possible focus for the visit.

Academy trust deployments

For academy trust deployments, the delivery lead will also provide some additional financial data, including a copy of your latest budget forecast return, recent budget plan and management accounts (if you have previously provided these documents).

Speak to your DfE delivery lead if you have any questions about the documents to be shared with the SRMA.

The SRMA will then contact you to arrange dates for their visit. They will ask for any additional information they need in advance and talk through the things they will want to look at when they visit you.

Your delivery lead may also suggest a 3-way call between them, you and the SRMA to:

• talk through the purpose and timeline for the deployment
• confirm any specific areas you want the SRMA to focus on

Local authority deployments

For local authority deployments, the DfE delivery lead will arrange a call with the local authority and the SRMA to ensure everyone is clear on what is expected and by when. The SRMA will ask for any additional information they need ahead of meeting with you, as well as what they’ll want to see when they visit. The SRMA will then contact you to arrange dates for visits.

Documents the SRMA may ask to see before or during visits include:

• latest budget and financial plan, to include at least one previous year and the starting balances for the current year
• pupil numbers, actual and forecast
• staff list and staffing structure, ideally including total teaching staff full-time equivalent (FTE) and support staff FTE, teaching, support and non-curriculum staff costs, senior leadership team (SLT) and teaching and learning responsibility costs
• teaching hours and curriculum plan
• completed school resource management self-assessment checklist for academy trusts or completed schools financial value standard (SFVS) for local authority maintained schools
• management accounts and financial reporting to trustees and governors
• contracts and service level agreement (SLA) registers
• risk register
• minutes and reports from recent governance meetings (for example, governing body or trust board meetings, interim executive board meetings, finance committees)
• internal audit reports or local authority audit reports
• any recent relevant schools forum decisions

In addition, local authority maintained schools will need to provide information on:

• the level of finance support provided by the local authority, either as part of its statutory duties or via a traded service

• any local authority school place planning issues that may affect school organisation, for example:

  • pupil numbers
  • potential federation options
  • moves from 3 to 2 tier

The SRMA will use this information to develop a deeper understanding of your trust or school’s financial health and your approach to school resource management. The SRMA will also make comparisons against benchmarks to consider areas of focus for the meetings. We encourage SRMAs to use their own ICFP diagnostic tools, as well as the following DfE tools:

• integrated curriculum and financial planning (ICFP) resources
• the financial benchmarking and insights tool
• workforce benchmarking

Meetings and visits

Where possible, the SRMA should visit your school(s) in person, as this helps them to get a full picture of each setting’s context and build rapport with your leadership team. Where in-person visits are not practical, recent experience has shown that virtual deployments conducted though Zoom or Teams calls can also be effective – and may be more appropriate, in some cases. The DfE delivery lead will discuss this with you when organising the deployment. During all meetings, we expect everyone to conduct themselves in accordance with the Nolan Principles.

The SRMA is likely to spend a total of 1 to 3 days visiting each trust or local authority maintained school depending on the complexity and scope of the deployment. These may be consecutive days, individual days or half days spread over a longer period. The SRMA has 6 weeks from their first visit to a trust and 8 weeks from their first visit to a local authority maintained school (or 10 days after their last meeting, whichever is shorter) to submit their report.

The SRMA will meet your leadership team at the start of their visit. It’s up to you to decide who should represent your school or trust at this meeting, but it might reasonably include the:

• headteacher
• finance director
• school business manager
• chair of governors or trustees

The equivalent senior leaders in a multi-academy trust might include the:

• chief executive
• chair of trustees
• chief financial officer

The SRMA will discuss their initial analysis of your data. They will agree with the leadership team where they will focus the rest of their time and who they will need to talk to.

For a standard comprehensive review, SRMAs will consider a series of questions about:

• financial governance
• resource allocation
• benchmarking
• ICFP

SRMAs will make a series of recommendations for using resources to best effect, which may include:

• suggesting ways to streamline and improve existing plans and practices
• embedding ICFP
• minimising burdens on staff and removing unnecessary workload

They should also discuss and signpost you to the range of national deals, tools and available resources.

For bespoke visits, the SRMA will agree with the leadership team what data they will need to see and what meetings may be appropriate.

At the end of each deployment, the SRMA will meet you to present their findings and discuss their recommendations. Where relevant, these will include costed savings for you to consider. As part of this meeting, the SRMA will ask for your feedback and initial thoughts about their recommendations.

SRMA meetings with the local authority

As part of each local authority deployment, the SRMA will usually also meet with the local authority. This is an opportunity for the local authority to share its perspective on the schools included in the deployment and to confirm any specific areas of concern for the SRMA to consider.

This meeting also enables the SRMA to consider the extent to which the local authority takes an integrated approach to curriculum and financial planning across all its schools. The SRMA may ask questions about the local authority budget monitoring systems and talk about other school resource management tools and resources, especially if they’re producing a local authority summary report as part of their deployment.

After the SRMA’s visit

The SRMA will share their findings and draft reports with DfE. They will prepare a single report for each trust deployment. For local authority deployments, SRMAs will write separate reports for each school, as well as a local authority summary report where requested.

All reports are quality assured to ensure clarity and factual accuracy. The DfE delivery lead may raise any questions with the SRMA if anything in the report is unclear, but it is up to the SRMA to decide whether they make any changes to their report before it is finalised. For trust deployments, the delivery lead will share the final report with the trust’s chair and accounting officer. For local authority deployments, they will share the final school report with the local authority and ask for these to be sent to each school.

It is up to academy trusts, or schools in collaboration with their local authority, to decide which of the SRMA’s recommendations they will take forward, based on their specific circumstances. You may not agree with every recommendation the SRMA suggests.

DfE expects schools and trusts to implement recommendations that will:

• help improve resource management
• target funding to areas that support high and rising standards
• help break down barriers to opportunity for children

If you decide not to take any of the recommendations forward, you should be able to explain why that is the right decision for your context.

When DfE sends you the SRMA’s report, the email will include a link to a feedback survey. Your views are important. We use this feedback to understand what has worked well and what more we can do to improve the programme to best support school and trusts.

Follow-up and evaluation

Six months after we send you the SRMA’s report, DfE will contact you to arrange a follow-up meeting with the SRMA. This will usually be virtual and should take no more than half a day. This conversation is an opportunity to discuss progress and possible next steps. The SRMA can offer further advice on implementing recommendations where appropriate. For continuity, DfE will try to commission the SRMA who conducted the original visit.

As part of this follow-up, we ask you to complete a simple evaluation workbook that sets out the SRMA’s original costed recommendations and asks for actual and planned savings against each one. The SRMA can help you to complete this return. Where you are not planning to take recommendations forward, or where you have not yet finalised your plans, we will ask you to provide a brief explanation for this decision. The workbook is not intended to question your progress, as it is up to you to decide whether the SRMA recommendations are appropriate for your context.

This process helps DfE measure the impact of the SRMA programme and better understand its value for the schools sector. This feedback also helps DfE further tailor the programme to meet the needs of schools and trusts in future.

DfE may contact the trust or local authority to discuss potential case studies (such as these from Hackney Council and the Minerva Learning Trust) to support our understanding of where the SRMA programme has added value and where it may benefit from improvement.

The DfE Schools Commercial Team may also offer targeted support through the Get help buying for schools service and contact you to discuss procurement support and approved frameworks in more detail, if this is something the SRMA flagged in their report.

You may want further advice or support after a deployment has finished. While they are working with you, we expect SRMAs to focus on their deployment role and not use the visit as an opportunity to actively promote their own consultancy services. However, if you choose to contract SRMAs for additional advice, we support this where it is requested, needed and represents good value for money.

Any ongoing support must be agreed independently between you and the SRMA after the end of the deployment, taking account of relevant procurement processes and the SRMA’s own contractual obligations and other commitments. You would need to fund any additional support yourself.