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This helped pushed the average total income per pupil in a MAT up by 7.8% to £7,532 (2019 - £6,985).
There was also additional Condition Improvement Fund Income of £182M for the sector which helped push up the average total income per pupil as follows:
Secondary £5,030 (2019 £4,931) up by 2%
Primary £3,724 (2019 £3,657) up by 1.8%
Of course these movements are not entirely due to capital grants as there was a loss of other income and additional funding for both teachers’ pay and pensions included in total income.
We know from discussion with our clients that a significant proportion of this income was not spent by the 31 August 2020. This is not surprising given the late notification of the income and the time that it takes to put robust governance in place to properly allocate the spend and undertake procurement.
The spending deadlines for the SCA and Devolved Formula Capital are important as unspent grant must be returned. The time limits to spend this funding before the risk of a clawback occurring are:
The most critical deadline is for those of you in receipt of SCA in 2019/20 – i.e monies physically received between April 2019 and March 2020 and recognised as income in your August 2019 accounts, must be spent by 31.3.21 (unless you agree an extension with the ESFA).
One of the things we get regular questions on is the use of SCA, here are three of the most common ones:
Accounting for capital funding
Linked to SCA is the accounting for capital funding. The recognition of capital funding is a regular year end adjustment that we see when preparing statutory accounts. So, some brief reminders:
There is an alternative option, and that is to capitalise the value of works done – similar to leasehold improvements. However, given that most of the time, premises are occupied under a two-year licence then you would normally need to depreciate over two years. So in many ways, it’s just easier to treat the expenditure as a grant out in the year the expenditure is incurred.
Governance around capital income and expenditure is an important element of the work of the relevant committee. Each Trust must have a plan of what the grant will be spent on, which should include a contingency fund as spend will rarely go according to plan. The scheme of delegation must be really clear on the approval process for emergency spending too. Capital income must be separate from the other operational income streams and must be reported on separately in the management information as separate funds.