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ESFA preparing to tender for organisations to supply, manage and accredit Schools Resource Management Advisers (SRMAs).

Over the course of the 2017/18 academic year, the Department for Education, through the Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA), has piloted using School Resource Management Advisers (SRMAs). We’ve run the pilot with support from the Institute of School Business Leadership (ISBL).

Since January, SRMAs have provided impartial, expert business advice to schools and academy trusts. This includes how to make best use of their revenue and capital resources to deliver educational outcomes and contribute to whole-school improvement.

ESFA prioritises those schools/trusts that will benefit the most from this support. SRMAs then work through their financial information to identify ways to improve how they deploy staff or make more effective use of non-staff resources.

SRMAs also consider whether the trust or school uses an integrated curriculum and financial planning (ICFP) approach and how they carry this out.

So far, the results have been encouraging and SRMAs have been well received by the schools and trusts in the pilot who can see the real value of this service.

We are now in a position where we want to roll this service out more widely. To do this, we will be tendering for:

1. Organisations to manage the supply of SRMAs.
2. An organisation to develop and deliver induction and an accreditation process.

Suppliers of the management and supply contract will undertake activities including:

• identify potential SRMAs to go through an induction and accreditation process
• manage deployment of SRMAs throughout the contract period
• maintain a record of accredited SRMAs throughout the contract period, informing ESFA of any changes
• match SRMAs to monthly ESFA deployment commissions
• manage the contracts and payments to SRMAs or their employers
• liaise with ESFA on progress of SRMAs and any issues that arise during the contract period

SRMAs must have at least 2 years’ experience of school business management or financial management. They must have a good understanding of how the school system works. Experience as an accountant, school business professional, or similar role is desirable as is specialist experience in the school sector including, but not limited to, estates management, HR and procurement.

The key activities under the accreditation contract will be to:

• develop and deliver induction sessions for potential SRMAs identified by the winners of the management and supply contract
• develop and deliver a robust accreditation process, testing the candidates’ understanding of strategic school finances and the integrated curriculum financial planning (ICFP) approach

ESFA will be tendering for these services over the summer and expects to release the documentation later in July. We will run the tender process through the Bravo e-Procurement tool.

We will only make the tender documentation available through Bravo at the launch of the procurement.

This is an exciting opportunity. If you are interested in bidding, you can register on the Bravo e-procurement system now in advance of the tender launch.