Accounting for Extended Schools

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What is an extended school?

An extended school is one that provides a range of services and activities often beyond the school day to help meet the needs of its pupils, their families and the wider community.

What are the Accounting Rules?

The accounting rules for extended schools, which stem from the Education Act 2002, apply to all activities organised by the school outside school hours. The fundamental rule is that such activities must be self-financing and must not receive funding from a school's budget share. Consequently they need to be accounted for separately within FMS.

It also follows that there will be a separate balance at the year-end for extended school activities and that Governors should receive separate financial reports for the budget share and for other activities.

Community Facilities

All staff employed on providing “community facilities” must be on the payroll with proper contracts and on comparable terms to the school staff.   Job descriptions must be written and the correct pay evaluated.

The full requirements are set out in Annex F (blue) to the Financing Scheme for Schools, which uses the legal term of “the community facilities power".  Section 2 sets out the procedures to be followed before the power can be exercised.    

Please note that the following transactions do not count as the provision of community facilities by the school:

1. provision of study support (Please see note below #)
2. lettings of school premises (without staff other than the caretaker); and
3. provision of community facilities by hirers of school premises, provided they are independent of the school and the school does not bear any financial risk.

NOTE: (#) Study support is defined as learning activity outside normal lessons which young people take part in voluntarily. Study support covers many different activities. Its purpose is to improve young people's motivation, build their self-esteem, help them to become more effective learners and above all it aims to raise achievement.  

Further information

Further information can be found below in the Extract from Education Act 2002 and the Annex F document from Kingston's Financing Scheme for Schools

You can also find additional information online on the teachernet website.