On 20 April, the ESFA confirmed that trusts are not required to submit their Budget Forecast Return Outturn (BFRO) this year. The deadline for submission was 21 May. (read more details here)
The next deadline for finance departments is the Budget Forecast Return 3 year (BFR3Y). At this point in time, there has been no extension or removal of this deadline. The online form will be available from 23 June, though Eileen Milner’s letter does refer to a ‘stop, pause and deferment of filing requirements’, so there may be more to come.
COVID-19 Governance issues for academy trusts
Like leaders of all businesses, academies have had to adapt and adjust to a different way of working over the past few weeks. (read more here)
How many could have predicted that a pandemic was the biggest risk for this year? It certainly hasn’t featured on any risk registers that I’ve seen.
Now that the initial chaos is over and the urgent tasks have been dealt with, it is time to look at governance.
The leadership teams will have had to make many decisions in recent weeks about who is in school, how children are being taught and covering sickness. They will appreciate any support offered by the Trustees at this time.
Trustees should still be holding meetings as required by the AFH, those these will be virtual on one of the many platforms available including Microsoft Teams and Zoom. Some of you will have experienced this already and need to consider:
- Ensuring all Trustees have access
- Meetings are quorate
- How to approach decision making if holding a quorate virtual meeting is not possible. In such cases, a clearly documented audit trail of all communications should be retained.
