HCSS Education has a long standing relationship with St Thomas More and has been providing a variety of consultancy services to them for over 10 years.
HCSS Consultants visit the school on a quarterly basis to assist in the production of management reports for the Governing Body. Advice is also given on day-to-day financial issues and Consultants provide Senior Leadership Team training on all aspects of Financial and Strategic Management within the school.
HCSS Consultants also produce a full set of accounts at each year end and complete returns for submission to the Local Authority. Each year, HCSS are invited into the school to conduct a full systems and financial audit on both the Public and Private Funds and a Management Letter is produced listing action points for improvement, as well as complimenting areas that are carried out to a high standard.
Recently HCSS Education was asked to work with the Senior Leadership Team to produce a five year strategic plan, identifying the school’s strengths, areas for improvement, opportunities and threats.This process facilitated effective decision making ensuring the school was able to make full use of its resources, whilst giving them an opportunity to identify potential future financial challenges that may arise.
St Thomas More had been successful in managing their finances for years using a series of Excel spreadsheets. However, with the introduction of multi-year budgeting and more emphasis on schools required to plan strategically, St Thomas More found their spreadsheets were unable to handle the complexities of multi-year budgeting.
"In order to identify the long term financial impact upon the school, we called upon HCSS Education to help us create a strategic plan using their FPSadvance.Net software. HCSS consultants are experts in their field and fantastic people to work with. They worked alongside the staff here at the school to not only develop our strategic plan for the next five years, but to also show us how to use FPSadvance.Net. FPSadvance.Net enables us to monitor the school’s strategic position. In addition the software will also keep us aware of any external influences, such as falling pupil numbers, allowing us to make decisions on how to move the school forward by creating different scenarios.
The strategic plan surpassed our expectations and was completed within the agreed timescale. The plan has had a huge impact on the way we make decisions within the school, we are able to produce reports effortlessly and have more structure when planning and implementing strategies. I would recommend the services available from HCSS Education to any school or local authority who is looking to make financial projections, considering the effects of future trends on strategy and looking at how to make best use of their resources. We are able to produce reports and monitor the activities within our School Development Plan to keep them on time and on target.”
(Christine Adnams, St Thomas More School, Financial Officer).