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Financial Management and Control Evaluation

The submission deadline for both the short and the full Financial Management and Control Evaluation return is 30 November 2011.

Providers should complete their Financial Management and Control Evaluation (FMCE) return electronically and once approved, the FMCE return should be uploaded to the Provider Gateway in the Provider Financial Managment (PFM) – FMCE folder within PFM reports on the Provider Gateway.

In respect of both FMCE returns, this action should be completed by no later than 30 November 2011. 

Guidance on the self-assessment of a provider’s financial management and control arrangements using the Financial Management and Control Evaluation return (Version 1, Published 29 July 2011)

There are changes to the guidance in paragraph 5 of the executive summary and paragraph 13 of the detailed summary.

Financial Management and Control Evaluation return: Annex A Further Education and Sixth Form Colleges (Published 29 July 2011)

Financial Management and Control Evaluation  return: Annex B for Non Colleges and Independent Specialist Colleges (Published 29 July 2011)

Indicative Examples of Grade Components for Further Education and Sixth Form College Corporations (Published 22 August 2011)

Indicative Examples of Grade Components for:

• all non-college providers who have been in receipt of a contract from the Chief Executive of Skills Funding for over 12 months

• Independent specialist providers and appropriate charitable and commercial providers (with a majority of 16-19 provision) who are funded by the YPLA.

(Published 22 August 2011)

This supersedes all previous FMCE guidance.

The FMCE return requires all in-scope providers to self-assess, evaluate and grade their financial management and control arrangements on an annual basis. This approach was built on the previous arrangements that existed for colleges since the 1990s and for all other providers since 2005/06. Since then all providers have had to assess the soundness, operation and effectiveness of their financial management framework as part of their overall self-assessment process, in accordance with the LSC document, Quality Improvement and Self-Assessment, published in May 2005 (a self-assessment report had to be prepared in preparation for inspection by Ofsted and as a part of their quality-improvement processes).

This guidance on self-assessment was augmented in the LSC/LSIS document, Self-assessment: Updated Guidance for the Further Education System published in September 2008.

Intended recipients: All colleges and providers.

This guidance also applies to sixth form colleges, independent specialist providers and certain commercial providers (with a majority of 16-19 provision) who are funded by the YPLA.