Chief Executive Blog
This blog will provide all NASBM stakeholders, members and the wider education sector with an insight into the weekly activities of the Chief Executive. The blog aims to illustrate activities being undertaken to support the association's key objectives and to ensure effective dissemination of information.
Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater!
We need to clear up any confusion caused by a rhetoric that suggests even small MATs need an accountant on their payroll. The Academies Financial Handbook is clear under 2.1.11:
“The trust’s finance staff must be appropriately qualified and/or experienced. Trusts should assess whether the CFO, and others in the trust holding key financial posts, should have a business or accountancy qualification dependent on the risk, scale and complexity of financial operations. Whilst a formal accountancy qualification may often serve as a proxy for the necessary skills, experience and personal qualities required for this role, there is no presumption that there will always be a perfect match.”
For the record, my background is as an economist. I am not an accountant, yet as an FD I successfully managed the finances of a large high-performing 11–19 Academy and was commended following an EFA audit for exemplary financial management, systems and controls. Many leading SBMs are highly qualified professionals with high-calibre financial knowledge and experience but not necessarily accountants.
I am not belittling the importance of strong financial acumen, but we should also not forget that finance is one operational discipline amongst many others that a school or academy must ensure they have the capacity to manage.
Contemplate this: would we expect the general manager of a large hotel to be an accountant? A strong understanding of finance and budgets, of course, but also oversight of HR, premises, procurement and a range of many other operational areas would be equally important.
Again, I cannot dispute that during the yearly financial cycle the technical expertise of an accountant may be called upon. But this intervention should be limited to no more than a few days, in the same way that you might call on a solicitor for specific legal help or a chartered surveyor for help with a capital project.
School business management is a specialised role and a profession in its own right; our work on the ‘NASBM Professional Standards’ makes this clear (www.nasbm.co.uk/professionalstandards). School business management, indeed the role of an academy FD, is not accountancy and whilst practitioners will inevitably engage in many of the technical elements of finance it is a different and much broader role.
Having said all this, the sector does need to upskill in terms of financial competency and indeed across all three pillars of the leadership triangle: head teachers, governors and senior administrators.
That is why NASBM has created an SBM National Qualifications Board working hard with the Chartered Institute of Public Finance, CPD providers and HEIs to ensure rigorous, accessible content and a revised curriculum with strong finance modules.
Please – let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
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10 October 2014 - Stephen Morales
24 September 2014 - Stephen Morales