Guidance

Schools financial value standard (SFVS) and assurance statement

This guidance helps schools and local authorities meet basic standards for good financial health and resource management.

Applies to England

Documents

Details

Local-authority-maintained schools must submit the schools financial value standard (SFVS) to their local authority annually.

Local authorities use this information to inform their programme of financial assessment and audit. They submit an assurance statement every year to cover all the maintained schools in their area.

Academies should use the school resource management self-assessment checklist.

For the financial year 2023 to 2024:

  • schools should submit their SFVS to their local authority no later than 31 March 2024
  • local authorities should submit their assurance statement to DfE within 6 weeks, no later than 31 May 2024

Schools financial value standard checklist and guidance

The document ‘Schools financial value standard checklist’ is for schools. It asks questions of governing bodies in 6 areas of resource management. It includes links to relevant sections of the document ‘Checklist guidance’, which provides:

  • clarification for each question
  • examples of good practice
  • details of further support available to assist schools in addressing specific issues

The SFVS checklist guidance and additional resource documents are appropriate for the 2023 to 2024 reporting year.

Self-assessment dashboard

Our self-assessment dashboard helps schools complete their checklists. To find your self-assessment dashboard:

  1. Search for your school on the schools financial benchmarking website.
  2. Select ‘start a comparison’.
  3. Select ‘self-assessment dashboard’.

Guidance on completing the self-assessment dashboard is available.

The dashboard provides red, amber or green (RAG) ratings against a school’s data. This indicates how its spending and characteristics compare with those of similar schools or nationally recognised bindings, and includes possible follow-up actions.

Schools financial value standard assurance

The schools financial value standard assurance statement guidance is for local authorities. It explains how to complete the SFVS assurance statement.

The deadline to submit the assurance statement for the 2023 to 2024 financial year will be in May 2024. The guidance will be updated with information on how local authorities can submit the statement nearer to the deadline.

Contact us

Send feedback on the schools financial value standard to school.resourcemanagement@education.gov.uk.

If you’d like to receive occasional updates from DfE on topics and products related to school resource management, sign up to our school business professional contact list.

Published 28 February 2019
Last updated 17 November 2023 + show all updates
  1. Updated the 'Schools financial value standard checklist', 'Template for recording related party transactions' and the 'Checklist guidance' for 2023 to 2024.

  2. Dates in 'Schools financial value standard assurance statement guidance' updated for 2022 to 2023.

  3. Added a new version of the 'Template for recording related party transactions'. Users can enter start dates for transactions from 01 April 2022 in this version.

  4. Updated the page, including the documents 'Schools financial value standard checklist' and ‘Checklist guidance’, to reflect expectations for the 2022 to 2023 academic year. Changes to the guidance include, in section E on value for money, updates on threshold values for public procurement, good estate management and the get help buying for schools service.

  5. Added information on related party transactions and a link to the specimen signature template.

  6. Updated the template for recording related party transactions.

  7. Removed ‘Dashboard guidance’, added 'Template for recording related party transactions', replaced ‘Schools financial value standard’ with an accessible version. Updated ‘Checklist guidance’ with information for the new 2021 to 2022 financial year.

  8. Added schools financial value standard assurance statement guidance for local authorities.

  9. Updated spreadsheet tool to fix a bug some users were experiencing for the pupil to teacher ratio expenditure category.

  10. Update: The Schools financial value standard (SFVS) return deadline for the financial year 2020 to 2021 has been delayed.

  11. Updated 'Schools financial value standard' to correct a bug that was occurring when users put data into the pupil to teacher ratio field.

  12. Updated 'schools financial value standard' with red, amber and green ratings based on 2018 to 2019 data.

  13. Added information about returns for local authorities during the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak. Updated the .xlms tool to include bug fixes, and the dashboard and checklist guidance to include formatting changes. Removed the form and support notes.

  14. Updated the dashboard in the 2019 to 2020 SFVS to include additional RAG ratings for average teacher cost and spend on teaching staff as a percentage of total expenditure, so that schools can benchmark different years of data. Also updated the dashboard guidance to reflect these changes.

  15. Added a link to free training on ICFP for school leaders.

  16. In ‘12. Section C’ and ‘13. Section C’ of the 2019 to 2020 dashboard guidance, we added a correction to the ‘calculating your data’ formula.

  17. Added minor clarifications to our recommendations on how often governors should receive monitoring reports in the 2019 to 2020 checklist guidance.

  18. Updated the schools financial standard to the 2019 to 2020 version.

  19. Updated section 20 and 21 of the '2019 to 2020 checklist guidance' and the '2019 to 2020 schools financial value standard'.

  20. First published.