Speaker: Katrina Woodland, Manager, Non-government Schooling and Sector Support Unit, Department of Education.
My name is Katrina Woodland. I’m the manager of non-government schooling and sector support. I do have a colleague here who some of you may recognise from emails or you may have spoken to him. And that is Shubham Ahuja [Senior Funding and Accountability Officer].
So, today our presentation is to talk you through the requirements of the funding agreement, which you’ve all received, as well as what we require from you regarding acquittals.
So, you’ve already heard about the Child Safe Standards, minimum standards around governance. This part of the presentation, if you like, is sort of at the other end. It’s related to the assurance processes that the department has in place in relation to the funding agreement. So, we can be assured that you, as a school, are acquitting your obligations, and we can work together around assessing that.
So, we’ll start with the funding agreement. All of you, for the new independent schools. And I think there might be a Catholic school and a Seventh Day Adventist school, potentially on the line as well. The way we work with you is through your system authority. All the independent schools on the line, we’ve directly emailed you, your executed agreements. Thank you again, for working with us to get those done quickly. In order to facilitate your first payment, hopefully you provided our financial services division with your application form to release that first payment. As you, may know, funding is provided, in 3 tranches annually, typically in January, July, and October. Given that it’s your first payment, that is a little bit different this year, it will be March for your first payment.
You’ve also been emailed the Victorian government financial assistance to non-government school guidelines. As with all the guidelines referenced throughout this webinar. That is a really important document. it details the policies, procedures and accountabilities associated with, the State recurrent grant funding from the Victorian government, including how funding must be spent.
I thought I would give you a little bit of context. We’ve got you as new schools here. Charles mentioned the number of schools across the system and all up, the Victorian government funds over $1 billion annually to non-government schools. So, that’s a really big commitment to this particular sector.
The current 4-year agreement that you will have received does expire at the end of next year, 2025. You will be issued a new funding agreement from 2026. And this will be developed in consultation with the non-government school sector, including, our friends at the ISV, Independent Schools Victoria, who will also be presenting.
We have spoken about the actual agreement. And now I’m turning, your attention to the acquittal processes.
Of course, with any organisation or entity in receipt of public funds, there must be an assurance process to ensure accountability. And that’s what this program is about.
You must provide to the, to the department the following financial information annually. And that’s by June of next year. Obviously, this is your first year. It’s planned on a calendar year. So, in 2025, we will be requesting the annual acquittal certificate. The details will be provided to you specifically and in the Guidelines.
But the certificate must be certified by an independent auditor. And either the school system authority heads for school systems and, for independent schools, the chair of the governing body of the legal entity that controls the school.
So, there’s a bit of a level of technicality there. But we’re here to help clarify that, as is the ISV, but certainly your school board, around the governance side of things that Antoinette spoke about, should absolutely be across this. We will be asking you for your financial report for 2024 and an independent auditor’s report.
As I mentioned, we’ll be giving you information. This is a little way off, so I will be giving you information specific to this and, of course, you’re welcome to ask us any questions throughout the year or close to next year.
We do find that most schools bring their auditors in February. As this provides enough time to accurately complete the acquittals and have the financial reports completed by the end of June.
Now, the 30th of June date is very important. If there is some reason you think you won’t be able to submit by this date, you must contact us. And we have our details at the end of the presentation.
Let us know early, and we can work with you, to move that work forward. Sometimes we get things, quite simple things like errors in the forms, things we can point out to the documents must be accurate and there must be a proper assurance process.
The earlier you get those to us, the more we can, help you in sufficient time. And just to reiterate, why are we doing this? Why is this important? Well, we want to work with you to make sure that the funding is being used as intended.
That really is the key message, and that is to support the teaching, learning, and welfare of your students as per the funding agreement and the guidelines. And the VRQA has spoken around the Child Safe Standards, the critical importance of that.
Just to give you a little bit of background, the Victorian funding guideline for services to children, which was introduced, implements recommendations made by parliamentary inquiry a number of years ago, which is known as the trial of trust.
As I mentioned, everyone in this room is aware of that, this found that survivors of institutional child abuse were sometimes unable to identify an appropriate legal entity to sue. And many organisations did not have sufficient assets to meet compensation claims. So, to address this, all non-government organisations funded to deliver services to children must be incorporated and appropriately insured. And of course, that includes you and is outlined in the funding guidelines we provided to you.
You must meet specific requirements to be eligible for the funding around insurance coverage. we will be asking for your annual certificate of currency, within three weeks of the insurance expiry date. And we’ll be giving you a reminder beforehand.
Shubham works very closely with schools on a weekly basis on this, he and I are here to help you. but we just want to reiterate the absolute importance of that. And if you’re having any issues, we want to know early and work through processes to make sure this aspect of the planning agreement is complied with.
There is a lot of information in there, but as I mentioned, you’re very welcome to contact us. We’ve got our email address, and we’re very happy to help.
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