School resource management advice service to expand

The Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) is looking for organisations to supply, manage and accredit Schools Resource Management Advisers (SRMAs) so they can be rolled out further.

SRMAs provide impartial, expert business advice to schools and academy trusts on how to make best use of their revenue and capital resources.

Over the course of the 2017/18 academic year, the Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) piloted SRMAs with support from the Institute of School Business Leadership (ISBL).

SRMAs work through a school or academy's financial information to identify ways to improve how they deploy staff or make more effective use of non-staff resources.

SRMAs also consider whether the trust or school uses an integrated curriculum and financial planning (ICFP) approach and how they carry this out.

The results have been encouraging and the ESFA now wants to roll this service out more widely.

To do this, they are tendering for organisations to manage the supply of SRMAs and an organisation to develop and deliver induction and an accreditation process.

Suppliers of the management and supply contract will identify potential SRMAs to go through an induction and accreditation process; manage deployment of SRMAs throughout the contract period; maintain a record of accredited SRMAs throughout the contract period, and match SRMAs to monthly ESFA deployment commissions. They will also manage the contracts and payments to SRMAs or their employers and liaise with ESFA on progress of SRMAs and any issues that arise during the contract period.

SRMAs must have at least two years’ experience of school business management or financial management. They must have a good understanding of how the school system works. Experience as an accountant, school business professional, or similar role is desirable as is specialist experience in the school sector including, but not limited to, estates management, HR and procurement.

The key activities under the accreditation contract will be to develop and deliver induction sessions for potential SRMAs identified by the winners of the management and supply contract and
develop and deliver an accreditation process.

ESFA will be tendering for these services over the summer and expects to release the documentation later in July. It will be running the tender process through the Bravo e-Procurement tool.

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