Congratulations, you are successfully accredited! What next?
DfE issue deployments to us on a monthly basis and we allocate these according skills, location and availability.
Deployments vary range from 5 to 11 days, alongside bespoke deployments to meet a particular need. SRMAs will be paid £600 per day for each deployment.
SBP Mentoring deployments are also available. These are 12 hours of support over a number of weeks, paid at £900 per deployment.
What kind of support might an SRMA deployment offer schools and academies.
DfE receive a wide range of requests for support therefore each deployment is to offer bespoke support to academy trusts and local authority maintained schools.
All deployments will support effective resource management by providing independent and impartial advice to schools and trusts on how to maximise resources using ICFP in order to maintain and improve educational outcomes for all pupils, including those with SEND. SRMAs take into account the nature of the school, i.e. whether it is academy or maintained, MAT or SAT, mainstream, special or Alternative Provision, primary or secondary, and whether it is a faith school.
A standard SRMA deployment will take a holistic view of the school’s/trust’s financial situation, including consideration of the following issues:
- Human resources: Effective curriculum delivery, workforce planning and wider use of staff and leadership time through the use of Integrated Curriculum and Financial Planning (ICFP).
- School management and governance: financial management and challenge across the senior leadership team and board of governors.
- Resources: Procurement (including, for example, consideration of National Deals, schools’ buying strategies etc.), value for money, capital finance and estate management.
- Asset Management: Good Estates Management and strategic vision for the schools’ assets.
SRMAs can offer support in a number of ways and are deployed in differing capacities depending upon the individual needs of the school/trust. These include:
- Where the school or trust is in good financial health, the SRMA shall be required to make recommendations on how the school or trust can further improve its approach to financial management to ensure every possible resource is being directed to the areas that have greatest impact on educational outcomes; part of this will be determined by the school or trust’s approach to ICFP.
- Where a school is experiencing difficulties the SRMA can support a school or trust to develop a viable budget plan by examining its financial planning and proposed spending plans. As part of this, the SRMA will be expected to consider whether the trust or school uses an ICFP approach and, if so, how this is carried out. This includes identifying whether it uses ICFP diagnostic tools and models and how.
- Where the trust or school does take an ICFP approach, the SRMA shall work through the key metrics to identify options that could potentially deliver improvements in the way staff are deployed.
- Where the trust or school does not use ICFP, the SRMA shall help it introduce ICFP into its planning processes as well as suggesting other options for improvements.
- Where a school or trust has a new CFO the SRMA can be deployed as a mentor to support the growth and development of the new CFO.
- In most instances, SRMAs will be expected to carry out a ‘follow-up’ deployment to the same setting at least six months after report submission. The purpose of this deployment will be to check on progress against the recommendations.
What kind of support might an SBP Mentoring deployment offer schools and academies.
DfE supports requests for SBP Mentoring from all types of schools. The expectation is that After working with a SBP mentor, mentees should be effective in the management of the school or trust’s business functions, finances and/or operations (depending on their role and the roles of those they are mentoring.
They should be able to competently carry out tasks around budget planning, monitoring, financial reporting, operational leadership, and other business activities. The mentee will be confident in developing and implementing strategies to resource and deliver the trust’s objectives whilst achieving value for money across all areas of spend.
The DfE believes that mentoring is most effective when it is driven by the participant and once the peers are matched the mentor and mentee should agree key objectives for the relationship alongside the DfE, including:
The frequency of meetings and overall length of relationship. For example, this could be meeting fortnightly for twelve 1-hour sessions over 6 months (default model), or six 2-hour sessions twice a month for 3 months, or monthly 1-hour sessions over a year.
All SRMAs and SBP Mentors must carry out a minimum of one deployments per year (from the date of their accreditation) to maintain their accredited status.
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The SRMA will:
- Agree introductory meeting within 2 weeks of formal commissioning documents received from DfE.
- Request information required and review.
- Meet with senior leaders, usually CEO, CFO and Chair in a trust, and with Local Authority (LA) representatives and Headteacher and SBM of any nominated schools in a LA deployment.
- Discuss any potential recommendations/outcome of your analysis to determine achievability.
- Agree exit meeting within 4 weeks of acceptance.
- Complete deployment within 6 weeks of introductory meeting.
- Submit report to DfE within 10 working days of exit meeting.
The SBP Mentor will:
- Agree introductory meeting within 2 weeks of formal commissioning documents received from DfE.
- Agree a set of recorded, measurable (SMART) objectives.
- During each deployment, mentors must complete the appropriate record templates provided by the DfE.
- The mentee must also complete a self-assessment form before mentoring starts, to help inform objectives, and an evaluation survey at the end of mentoring, to allow an evaluation of the effectiveness of the deployment.
- It is not a requirement that details of mentoring conversations are shared with the DfE, but mentors must confirm dates of the first and last meetings, the hours worked, and both mentors and mentees should provide feedback at the end of each deployment.
- Submit final feedback reports to DfE within 10 working days of exit meeting.
Standard deployments
Bespoke Deployments
