The outlook for school finances is less certain than previous years so it is more important than ever to ensure the budget is carefully constructed. Now is a good time to undertake a quick SWOT analysis with the Board (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats).
Ka mua, ka muri — Walking backward into the future. Good budget setting begins with a thorough analysis of current expenditures to ensure an accurate understanding of where the money is going. A good place to start is to look at your SUE report and compare it to a detailed breakdown of current staffing expenditure by budget code.
Now is also a good time to review the level of working capital, and to decide how much should be held in reserve for unforeseen events and general resilience. If there isn't enough for safety, then budget for a surplus. On the other hand, if there is already a significant amount of working capital, make sure you can justify this, or better, make a plan to reinvest some of it into the school. Ask us for help with finding the right level of working capital for your school.
The last step before drafting the budget is to review your staffing provision for 2025. Provisional staffing notices are already available. If your staffing is lower than anticipated, then perhaps make time to review staffing levels, school organisation and class structure for 2025. Hopefully, this will prove reassuring, but if you do have to make changes, then it's best to know before you set the budget.
Finally, you can start drafting the budget! Create a budget worksheet and populate it with the predicted income and expenditure for 2025. Some schools prefer to do this on their own, but again, Edtech will always be pleased to help you with this.