School Budgeting & Enrolment Forecasting: Per-Pupil Funding, Staff Costs & Reserves

What you'll build

What you will be able to do

Each lab ends with a concrete result that you build yourself and the checker confirms, cell by cell.

• Calculate grade progression ratios from three October counts, average them, roll every cohort forward one grade, forecast the new Grade 1 intake from births and add up next year's roll.
• Price each funding factor, add the lump sum, apply the minimum funding per pupil with MAX, and work out the funding per pupil and the share that comes from additional-needs factors.
• Look up each teacher's salary on the pay scale, move them up one step in September without passing the top, split the financial year into the old and new pay rates and add employer on-costs.
• Calculate annual pay for hourly-paid support staff on term-time and all-year contracts, convert hours and weeks into FTE, total the cost with on-costs and protect the contract column with a validation list.
• Budget energy from usage, a saving target and a price rise, work out the net cost of school meals, uplift each contract by its own index and add a per-pupil resources line into one non-staff budget.
• Turn annual budgets into a budget to date with spending profiles, calculate the variance to date, forecast each line's outturn at the current pace and flag the forecast overspends.
• Grow staff and non-staff costs for three years, compare them with income from the pupil forecast, roll the reserves forward and chart how fast the reserves shrink once the budget turns into a deficit.
• Build a running total of savings ranked by their impact on pupils, decide which options are needed to close the 2029 deficit, check the staff-cost ratio and report how many options the governors must approve.