Back Office Efficiency & Financial Management In Schools

Consultancy for effective financial management in schools and trusts. Expert strategy support for successful money saving in education.

The Lion Academy Trust has achieved £500,000 in money-saving for trusts and schools over the last three years through back-office rationalisation, and streamlining financial processes and controls to create capacity and revenue generation to benefit every school.

The rising pressures on schools and trusts' budgets means that responsible leaders and organisations are seeking every reasonable and risk-assured method to reduce operational inefficiencies and secure more funding for where it matters most - in the classrooms in support of teaching and learning.  

Electing to work with those in need of structural support, the Lion Academy Trust are experts in money management for schools. Having redesigned the workflows and controls around order management, processing and financial oversight to create a model of working, we have generated over £1.5m in savings and efficiencies which have been redirected to school improvement and supporting staff in class. 

Through our team of finance and educational process experts, the Lion Academy Trust is offering a comprehensive programme of support to stand-alone schools and trusts to redefine how decision making and systems interact. This is all driven from an educational perspective and with a deep understanding of funding, governance and controls that are routinely in place across the school system.

By taking a whole system approach to financial management in education, we support schools and trusts by:

Systems and procedures:

  • Process mapping - taking existing process flows to identify duplication, bottlenecks, inefficiency and systemic constraints.
  • Design requirements - investing in stakeholder engagement to understand the needs of the organisation against external regulatory and statutory compliance regimes.
  • Solution design - utilising best practices and proven solutions to offer efficient, sustainable operational solutions to meet the needs of the organisation.
  • Policy - working to generate a revised policy and governance ecosystem and recommendations to embed the new operating model design.

By focusing specifically on the financial management in schools and trusts we target:

  • Purchase ledger engagement, control, and security
  • Bank processes for consolidated Trust finances and reduction in fraud risk
  • Centralisation/outsourcing bulk processing and functions
  • Purchase to pay rationalisation
  • Management information design and delivery

The Lion Academy Trust teams provide financial management exclusively in the education sector but bring a wealth of wider expertise from banking, consultancy and systems development to offer a holistic and robust approach to cost reduction and process simplification for schools and trusts. 

Talk to us today about financial management in schools

Unless there is a coherent approach to tackling the key operational issues in every setting and schools - based on in-depth and proven risk management practices, schools and trusts may misdirect precious time, effort and resources and not fully address the key issues at hand. We have gone through the learning curve of how best to measure the performance of schools in these key areas and as school leaders ourselves, have too often been on the receiving end of reports and surveys that lacked real "so what" impact - and we aim to work with schools to ensure that never happens again.

Justin James, CEO, Lion Academy Trust