How are schools responding to the credit crisis?

Schools in England are on 3 year finance systems now following the introduction of the Schools Financial Management Standard and other measures.  There are details of this in the article at http://www.hamilton-house.com/free%20reports/When.pdf (see part 2 in particular).So schools certainly should know what they have got this year and next year and the credit crunch won’t be affecting them.

However last financial year was the year in which schools were able to run over as much of their money as they liked without losing it.  (This as a final much-delayed response to the chaos of 2003 when schools ended up making huge numbers of teachers redundant, only to re-employ them 6 months later when the funding came through).

So in the financial year 2007/8 schools were told to spend everything they had accumulated over previous years - and they did.  That rule hit in November 2007 and that put spending up dramatically in November and December last year.

This year there is no roll over, and no old funds to use.   So firstly, the extra money of last year is not there.  

And secondly, because the old roll-over rules don’t apply now, I think people are holding back just in case they need to buy something urgently in February.   That suggests that there should be a big load of sales in February - although you can’t sue me if there isn’t.

Thirdly, e-learning credits came to an end in August, which means that IT products are competing for real money once again - and that means that non-IT purchases are competing for a pot of money that is being squeezed over a wider range of products.

That I think is it.   They know about the budgets, they haven’t got last year’s bonus, they know they have to spend the money by April and are holding back to next term, and they ain’t got no e-learning credits.

Other than that it is business as usual.

If you would like to know more please do call me on 01536 399 000 or email Tony at schools.co.uk - or visit www.educationmarketing.org.uk 

This entry was posted on 19/11/2008 at 01:45 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.

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