Hotline advice expressed here, and in calls to us, is made in good faith to our members. Schools and colleges should always take formal HR or legal advice from their indemnified provider before acting.

Leaders’ surgery

Added concern

Q) I am a headteacher in an academy and the Education Funding Agency (EFA) has found anomalies in the school’s finance audit. I have left this area entirely to the finance director. As it is her responsibility, should she therefore be suspended and subject to disciplinary measures?

A) This is potentially a very serious matter. In law, as headteacher you are also the accounting officer and hence ultimately accountable for the financial control of the school and the public money allocated. In addition, the Trust (to whom you are the lead adviser) should have also been interrogating the finances at meetings and, while they may bear some responsibility, if you have not advised them along the way, then this again could come back on you.

Although you should be able to rely on the business leader to manage the day-to-day finances and to provide data and advice on setting the budget, you, as head, must ensure that she is doing her job properly and you must fully understand how and why finances have been allocated and on what the money is being spent. If the anomalies are serious enough for there to be a suspension and disciplinary action, then it is likely that both you and the business leader could be affected. You need to talk to the chair of the Trust about the audit report and you will need to seek further support from ASCL.

Safety first

Q) I am a business leader. We have heard of a number of schools that have been affected by hoax ‘bomb scares’ – do we need a separate policy for this?

A) No. Each school should, however, have a Critical Incident Policy that gives the approaches to be adopted for a variety of known and unknown issues, of which a ‘bomb scare’ may be one. The vital thing is that the Critical Incident Policy makes clear that student and staff safety comes first, that external agencies are involved early (and their advice is recorded and followed) and that the policy should state who within the school takes control of the immediate situation (and what happens if they are not available). If your school does not have such a policy, then you need one. Many local authority (LA) and academy chains’ policies are available to view on public websites and you could adapt one of these to meet the needs of your school.

Check your records

Q) I am a deputy headteacher. I’ve checked my pensionable service online but I noticed that my first year of service seems to be missing. I contacted the Teachers’ Pensions Scheme (TPS) and they said that I need to follow this up with the local authority (LA) that I was working for at the time. I did that and the LA said that their record shows that at the time I was doing supply work and had not opted into the TPS. However, this was not the case and it is now even more complicated as the school I was working at no longer exists.

A) You should check your pensions and contributions regularly as we frequently hear of cases like yours. If you have copies of your P60 end-of-year tax statements, or a copy of your contract from that time, then we could present this to the LA to show that they are wrong. The main reason for checking your TPS records are accurate is that it is an employer’s responsibility to make correct returns to the TPS, and in many senior leaders’ employment history, this would have been done by paper records, which may have been subject to much more errors than that of today’s automated systems.

Checking records is becoming even more important as the employer changes regularly for most teachers during the course of their careers, especially with the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 2006 (TUPE), the creation of academy trusts and with schools swapping trusts – in the future – it could be difficult to trace back who was responsible for missing contributions to the TPS. As a matter of routine, all teachers and senior leaders should keep contracts and P60s from their entire career and as part of an employer’s ‘duty of care’, senior leaders should advise all of their staff to do so.

David Snashall and Rachel Bertenshaw are ASCL Hotline Leaders

Contact the hotline

ASCL members concerned about leadership issues should call the Hotline on 0116 299 1122 or email hotline@ascl.org.uk

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