Hillside Primary School Governors Finance Committee

Earley Cluster Bursar’s Briefing Minutes of Meeting held 3/3/15 At Hillside School

Members Present: - Earley St Peters, Loddon (minutes) Schools Finance Aldryngton, Hillside, Kay Marshall

Members Absent:- Radstock, Whiteknights, Hawkedon

Item Action By No. 1 Apologies Hawkedon

2 Minutes of previous meeting and matters arising  Minutes were approved as a true copy.

3 Matters arising from the minutes not covered elsewhere  None 4 Schools finance updates Early years funding budget has been distributed – however some school schools to have not received details - follow up PE grant , Pupil Premium - not yet sent out High needs budget has been distributed – however some school have schools to not received details follow up

UIFSM accruals are being action and will be amended if necessary KM

New timetable for closedown has been issued, please note that only - one imprest claim is possible because it is so tight. Iterim wise will hopefully have Payroll but don’t reconcile against it as there will be changes and corrections.

Conversion of FMS ledger codes to WISER codes. KM to check if we can KM edit ledger descriptions to include new codes as it is getting very confusing working with two systems

Schools finance telephones and emails are monitored by different people on different days

Schools finance are recruiting an additional 0.6 person with FMS experience. Look out for the advert.

of 3 Send email to schools finance if you have any ideas for bursar All conference

SFVS must be completed this month All

Please ensure that the final imprest is marked FINAL, an additional All imprest can be done the week before on 24th March.

It may be necessary to get retrospective approval for the claim from the KM head. KM to confirm the schools finance happy with this 5 Budgets All schools in the cluster have had between £9-15k reduction in DSG budget. Staffing costs have increased following pay progression and changes to employer pension contributions. The bursars agreed that  The consultation in October on allocation of DSG was not clear KM to feedback that the additional funding would be used to support the new schools that have opened.  It would be difficult to set a balanced budget and would be even KM to feedback more challenging next year. KM confirmed that  Schools finance expect staffing to be 85% of DSG.  Schools can only set a deficit budget with agreement from WBC and the school has a plan on how it will be repaid.

6 Benchmarking Schools (Loddon and Aldrygton) have been benchmarking CFR data against other schools in the cluster Hillside suggested benchmarking school staffing structures including All amount of non contact time . Please send information to Hillside

7 Lunchtime supervisors Loddon and Aldrygton hosted open days which were attended by some of the other schools (some schools were unable to release staff) The supervisors who were able to go found it helpful giving them new ideas, they particularly liked Loddon’s use of TAs for some of the duties. E st P are doing ½ hour training per month and moving towards the Loddon model Hillside would still like to visit other schools Hillside to arrange 8 Selima At the recent superuser group selima confirmed They are still working on stopping double entry in SIMS and selima for absences etc They will be sending a list of leavers each year They are removing auto increment for all staff The old online payslip system has now closed and the 12-13 P60

of 3 will be uploaded to the new system The internal transfer option should be used for leavers who are transferring to other WBC schools . They are reviewing escalation routes particularly during school holidays Pension contributions can be reclaimed for upto 3 months through payroll but upto 2 years through Berkshire pensions.

The cluster reported that there have been cases where pension All Bursars to contributions have been taken but not credited to the individual by the be aware pension schemes.

9 Benchmarking site controller job description Carried forward because Radstock not at the meeting Radstock

Benchmarking lunchtime supervisor job description Withdrawn because it was requested by Whiteknights who is leaving

10 AOB FMS / budget planning options Staffing costs can be calculated and varied by inputing and maintaining data into SIMS Personnel (which is used to produce the workforce census) and then pulling it through into the FMS budget planning module – Loddon volunteered to help other bursars if requested

BACS Following the workshop at the last conference E St P are setting up Bacs payments. Loddon now pay 90% of invoices using Bacs including staff reimbursements. It has reduced the number of unpresented cheques, the time taken to write /post cheques and reconciling Bank statements.

Aldrygton donated flower seeds to the other schools

4 Date & time of next meeting

Venue: Loddon Date: Tuesday 16th June 2015 at 9.30 Chair – Hillside Minutes E st P