Education is becoming a 'business' says Darlington accountant
Chris Beaumont is a partner at Clive Owen LLP who've seen their education client base double in the last two years.
A Darlington accountant says education has become a 'business for schools' and cost increases mean some schools are struggling to balance the books.
Chris Beaumont is partner and education specialist at Clive Owen LLP in Darlington, who helped with many of the early academy conversions in the North East.
The conversion process means schools will take on their own finance and HR responsbilities, rather than them being carried out by the local authority.
This means many are drafting in the expertise of accountants like Chris.
He said: "Not all schools need external advice but where they've converted to an academy, there is a requirement for them to submit various returns because the Education Funding Agency want to know that the money provided by the state has been spent appropriately."
Chris told TFM that changes to pension costs and national insurance mean many schools are now seeing their running costs increase.
He said: "Staffing costs in the last 8 months have gone up about 5 per cent on their own, which is a significant impact.
"It doesn't matter if you're an academy or a local authority school, you can have those cost increases either way, which is obviously causing significant concern for some schools when they're trying to balance those budgets."
One school to recently benefit from the company’s expertise in this field is Polam Hall School and Sixth Form in Darlington. The former independent school opened as a free school in September last year and now operates with academy status. Clive Owen has been working behind the scenes with the school’s finance director, Carole Johnson throughout the transition.
“Converting from what was effectively a privately-run business to a state-funded establishment was a major undertaking and one that required specialist knowledge in EFA procedures and compliance,” said Carole.
“The school has been fortunate to have an accountancy firm with national standing within the sector, already on the doorstep.
“With rapid pupil growth from 230 to 640 as a free school and a further rise to 700 by September this year it was imperative that we had streamlined systems in place and for that reason we sought professional guidance from accountants who’ve been through the process before.”