Education

Further Education Colleges

At Francis Clark we act as the external auditor for three further education colleges in the region. We offer a refreshing, transparent audit of their financial statements, focusing on a real understanding of the college’s financial performance and position.

We see a key part of our role as helping the college’s audit committee to fully understand the accounts the corporation will be approving, acting as an independent interpreter of the figures. Whilst strong relationships with the college’s executives are important, our role is to protect the members and we will never lose sight of this.

We approve of the LSC definition of our role as ‘Financial Statements Auditor’. Our job is to form opinions on the annual financial statements of the college, not to provide a consultancy-based service, nor a systems opinion.

We understand that you operate under a demanding set of rules. Our starting point is to understand the regulations, under which you work, by fully understanding your sources of income and the attached restrictions on activity and expenditure. We make no secret that we believe many colleges have been subject to too much external scrutiny recently, in some years seeing no less than 4 different teams of auditors. We also believe some auditors can make the process unnecessarily complex.

Our fees are often significantly less than many of our larger competitors. Our audit team has vast experience and our audit technical expertise is unrivalled in the region. As it is clear there will be cuts in public spending, all public bodies will need to take a very close look at their overheads, so we ensure we provide genuine value for money.

Schools

The firm acts for a number of private schools, many of which are also registered charities. We have helped to guide these schools through the maze of compliance with the requirements of the Charities SORP.

We also provide assurance services to state funded schools and have accreditation under the FMSIS (Financial Management Standard In Schools).

For more information, please contact our Education Team