The school is a maintained school and part of the Hampshire County Council  (HCC) family of schools. It is also a C of E controlled school, so the Church of England does not have any financial responsibility for the school and do not provide any funding for it.

The majority of the school’s funding is from our ‘budget share’ which is what the government give to HCC to distribute directly to us. Some of our budget share is kept by HCC for specific activity which all maintained schools benefit from, for example, to fund certain services. Other services are bought in from various companies including those which HCC provide, for example, the School Library Service, Personnel and Payroll service, Health and Safety service and Building maintenance.

A small amount of our overall budget is our Pupil Premium allocation, based on the numbers of children we have who meet certain criteria which makes them statistically more vulnerable to not performing as well as their peers. We also get some additional funding to support individual children who have an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP), although this does not fully fund adult support for those children.

We occasionally are successful in applying for funding for specific projects from trusts and charities and we are lucky to have a very dynamic PTA (PAFS) who donate thousands of pounds every year from fundraising activities.  We run our Breakfast and After school club ourselves so any income over operating costs is used in school.  Our local church and community also may also provide small grants for specific items or appeals.

The school governors are responsible for approving the budget of the school twice a year and for checking that the school is using a best value approach to all contracts and purchases. The headteacher is responsible for checking the work of the finance officer monthly to ensure that finances are well managed, for example by checking that orders match, that petty cash is reconciled correctly, that purchases on credit cards can be accounted for and provide good value. Governors carry out an audit at least annually on all areas of school finance in order to protect staff and ensure good practice.  The school governors also benchmark our costs and income against other similar schools in Hampshire.  Governors also meet with the headteacher annually to check the approach taken to pay increases for staff to ensure that this process is well managed and provides best value.

No one in our school earns over £100,000.

Information on School Benchmarking can be found using the DfE link https://schools-financial-benchmarking.service.gov.uk/