Balance Control Mechanism (BCM) - Year End 2020-21

In light of this the Schools’ Funding Forum at its meeting on 12 February have taken the pragmatic approach for one year only to revise the BCM criteria to reflect this.

The following are extracts from the SFF paper on 12 February, access the full Item 5 20-21 BCM Considerations (PDF, 150.1 KB) paper:

• Where schools are deemed to have an uncommitted balance in excess of the BCM limit they will be required to submit a plan of how they intend to reduce their school balance to within the BCM tolerance during 2021-22. This will include a summary of intended or known commitments and estimated amounts of specific items.
• Failure to provide the plan would result in the initiation of the full BCM process.

As per the normal year end process schools will be expected to complete an analysis of year end reserves, the above change will be incorporated in this process. Schools will receive their Year End Reserve analysis form as detailed in the Schools Year End closedown pack after the March’s schools advance has been run.

Those schools over the BCM will be contacted by email after Closedown to advise of any evidence required for their intended spends.