Trust Finance

The Trust Finance Professional Community is a new and unique development network for finance roles in school trusts.

The community provides support and development opportunities at a time of unprecedented change, through a blend of expert input on key practice challenges, facilitated discussion and networking.

The virtual community will give you a safe and supportive environment in which to develop your understanding of some of the key challenges related to operational practice across a group of schools, access expertise from across the sector, and build a professional community.

It is not intended to duplicate the work of existing valuable networks, like the FD Forum.

CST's professional communities focus on the concept of ‘practice challenges’ and engage through:

Half-termly virtual community meetings
Networking with colleagues across our sector
Access to CST briefings and guidance.

As a member of the community, you will also gain exclusive access to our virtual platform. This is a peer learning platform that connects you with a community of information, resources and support, that you can access anytime and anywhere. On the platform you'll find an ever-growing collection of resources, containing information about key knowledge areas needed in our profession, as well as a space to connect, learn and interact with your peers from across the country.

Membership of the community is included for employees of member trusts as a benefit of CST membership. Join using the button below with your MyCST membership details.

Join our Trust Finance Professional Community

Session Overview

Session One: Your Professional Community
Wednesday 13th September 2023, 10:00 - 11:00 (virtual)

An introduction to the year and exciting new changes to our professional community offer

Session Two: Schools Financial Benchmarking
Speakers: Dan Tovey and Gavin Monument
Wednesday 15th November 2023, 10:00 - 11:00 (virtual)

Dan Tovey: Dan joined the DfE in May 2020 and has primarily worked on our financial benchmarking tools, schools funding policy and SEN funding. Dan used to be a teacher of Modern Foreign Languages and has also worked on Foreign Trade Agreements at DIT.

Gavin Monument: Gavin joined the DfE in 2016, overhauling the academy financial data collection systems, including writing the academy chart of accounts. Gavin now works with Dan on our financial benchmarking tools. He is a qualified accountant with extensive experience working in schools and local authorities.

In this session Gavin and Dan will provide an update on their public facing Schools Financial Benchmarking website (SFB) and their service targeted specifically for school users, the View My Financial Insights (VMFI) service. The session will include a short demo of both services. They will also update you on their plans to create a single benchmarking service, bringing together the existing tools into a cohesive single service

Session Three:
Speakers: TBC
Wednesday 6th March 2024, 10:00 - 11:00 (virtual)

Session details TBC

Session Four:
Speakers: TBC
Wednesday 24th April 2024, 10:00 - 11:00 (virtual)

Session details TBC

Session Five:
Speakers: TBC
Wednesday 12th June 2024, 10:00 - 11:00 (virtual)

Session details TBC