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Schools & Education

Accounting and assurance for education — academy trusts, independent schools and training providers — under the sector's own rulebooks: the Academy Trust Handbook, the Accounts Direction, charity law, and now VAT on private school fees.

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Education finance answers to overlapping regulators: academy trusts file audited accounts to an August year-end under ESFA's Accounts Direction, run internal scrutiny programmes and live by the Academy Trust Handbook's consent requirements; independent schools are usually charities with trading subsidiaries — newly VAT-registered since fees became taxable — balancing bursaries, public benefit and thinning margins; and everyone runs large payrolls with teachers' pension schemes attached.

Acumon serves the sector across that landscape: statutory audit and accounts through our education audit team, internal scrutiny for trusts, the fee-VAT transition for independent schools done properly, and the payroll, pensions and governance support that sit underneath.

Academy Trusts: Audit, Accounts and the AAD

Trust reporting is its own genre: statutory accounts under the Accounts Direction with its model formats, the accounting officer's regularity statement audited alongside truth-and-fairness, the August year-end compressing everything into an autumn deadline, and the accounts return following after. Our education audit team runs the cycle to the sector timetable, on portal-based fieldwork sized for small finance teams — and knows the Handbook's furniture: related-party rules, executive pay disclosures, and the consents trusts must obtain before, not after, acting.

Internal Scrutiny and Trust Governance

The Handbook requires every trust to run internal scrutiny reporting to its audit and risk committee — proportionate, risk-based, and independent of the external audit. We deliver it as an outsourced programme: a plan built on the trust's actual risks (budget management in converting schools, payroll controls, GAG spending, cyber), focused reviews through the year, and committee reporting that satisfies ESFA's expectations while telling trustees something genuinely useful. For growing MATs, we scale scrutiny as schools join — the moment controls most often fracture.

Independent Schools and the VAT Era

VAT on private school fees rewrote independent school finance: registration, fee structures and prepayment schemes tested against anti-forestalling rules, partial exemption where nurseries and welfare remain exempt, and — the upside — input VAT recovery on costs and capital projects that schools never had before, with capital goods scheme claims worth serious money on recent builds. We run the compliance and optimise the recovery, alongside the charity structure questions independent schools carry anyway: trading subsidiaries for lettings and camps, Gift Aid on development income, and bursary economics under squeezed margins.

Payroll, Pensions and the Business of Education

Education payrolls are heavy machinery: teachers' pensions with employer contributions and their own administration, support staff on LGPS or auto-enrolment, term-time-only contracts with holiday pay done correctly under current law, and visiting staff whose status needs deciding. Our CIPP-qualified team runs school payrolls with the pension layers handled. Around it: budgeting and forecasting for bursars and CFOs, ESFA returns for trusts, and management reporting that lets governors see beyond the annual accounts.

What You Get With Acumon

  • Academy trust statutory audit and regularity opinion to the ESFA timetable
  • Accounts Direction formats and the accounts return handled routinely
  • Outsourced internal scrutiny programmes reporting to audit committees
  • Independent school VAT: registration, partial exemption and capital recovery
  • Trading subsidiaries and Gift Aid structured properly for school charities
  • Teachers' pension and LGPS payroll run by the CIPP-qualified team
  • Term-time-only holiday pay calculated to current law
  • Budgeting and reporting support for bursars and trust CFOs

Why Acumon for Schools & Education?

  • Education audit experience across academy trusts, schools and training providers
  • Charity and education sector audit team within an ICAEW-registered, FRC-authorised practice
  • Integrated VAT, tax and payroll advice alongside audit
  • 90+ UK-based staff with portal-based, low-disruption fieldwork

Get a Fixed-Fee Quote

Tell us what you need and we'll come back within one business day with a clear scope and a fixed price — no hourly-rate surprises. Call 020 8567 3451 or use the form and we'll be in touch.

Common Questions

Frequently Asked Questions

Our academy trust's audit feels heavier every year. Is that normal?
The requirements have genuinely grown — regularity assurance, expanding disclosures, internal scrutiny expectations — but much of the felt weight is timetable and preparation: an August year-end, a small finance team, and an audit arriving into half-term chaos. The fix is sector-aware planning: a prepared-by-client list agreed in summer, portal-based fieldwork that doesn't camp in the school office, and an audit team that already knows the Accounts Direction so nobody is learning formats on your time. That is how we run education audits, and the autumn stops being feared.
What does internal scrutiny actually have to cover?
The Handbook mandates the function, not a fixed checklist: scrutiny must be independent, risk-based and reported to the audit and risk committee, covering financial and non-financial controls proportionately to the trust's size and complexity. In practice good programmes rotate through the risks that actually bite trusts — budget-setting discipline, payroll and starters-leavers controls, procurement and related parties, GAG and grant conditions, IT access, safeguarding-adjacent financial controls — a few focused reviews a year. We build the plan with your committee and deliver it; ticking a generic list satisfies nobody, ESFA included.
How should our independent school handle VAT on fees now?
By treating it as a permanent operating discipline, not a crisis: registration and returns are the easy part; the value sits in partial exemption design (nursery and welfare exemptions preserved where they apply), input recovery captured fully — including capital goods scheme claims on recent building projects, which can return six figures — and fee and bursary strategy modelled with the VAT inside it. Prepayment schemes sold in the transition need reviewing against the anti-forestalling rules rather than assuming they held. We run all of it, with the charity structure kept coherent around it.
Can you run payroll with Teachers' Pensions and LGPS involved?
Yes — education payroll is a standing part of our CIPP-qualified team's book: Teachers' Pension Scheme contributions, tiers and the monthly data submissions; LGPS for support staff with its own bands and returns; term-time-only contracts with holiday pay computed to the current law rather than the old shortcuts; and the auto-enrolment layer for anyone outside the sector schemes. Schools typically arrive after a generalist bureau mangled the pension data; the fix is a payroll team for whom the education schemes are routine rather than exotic.
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