Consistent Financial Reporting (CFR) standardises, simplifies and streamlines the reporting of school finances in all local authority (LA) maintained schools in England.
The CFR data has been used to populate our Schools Financial Benchmarking website, giving schools the opportunity to compare their income and expenditure with those of similar schools. In addition, the CFR data is used to pre-populate part of the Section 251 outturn statements. In January 2011, for the first time, the Department published all schools’ CFR 2009-10 data as part of the Coalition Government’s data transparency agenda.
CFR increases the level of accountability of school managers whilst prompting schools to become more self-managing. Access to benchmarked data allows school managers to make better-informed decisions when deciding annual budgets, thus improving overall efficiency year on year. CFR facilitates networking between schools and encourages 'learning by looking' where schools look to each other for advice on best practice.
The approved headings for the CFR framework came into force on 1 April 2003 in preparation for the first full data collection exercise.
Legislation
Consistent Financial Reporting (England) Regulations 2003 (SI 2003 No. 373) is a statutory instrument that came into force on 1 April 2003.
