Management Accountant

Management Accountant 

Education South West (ESW) is a successful and growing multi-academy Trust. Currently the Trust comprises 15 schools: 5 secondary, 1 all through (primary and secondary) and 9 primary, schools, educating 6,000 children. The Trust has a track record of supporting schools which are part of the Trust as well as schools outside of the Trust, with a core aim of making children’s lives better. ESW is nationally recognised as one of the leading Trusts in the country, and co-leads the South West Institute for Teaching, delivering professional training for newly qualified and experienced teachers across hundreds of schools in the South West; ESW is also accredited to train aspiring teachers to become qualified teachers to commence their career. 

As a successful Trust, continued growth is planned, with a number of schools in ongoing discussions with us to join the Trust.

The Finance Director & Chief Operating Officer leads Shared Services, which provides proactive business partnering to the educational leaders of the Trust and the schools steering, driving and managing on their behalf: financial control and planning, payroll, human resource, IT (information technology), data analytics and reporting, operations (including estates, facilities and catering), compliance, sustainability, marketing and admissions, capital planning and project delivery. The FD & COO is supported by a Director of Accounting, IT Director, Compliance Director, Data Analytics and Reporting Manager, and Operations Managers who provide consolidated leadership across all of the shared services staff and functions, across all schools and activities of the Trust.

The Shared Services teams have reached an exciting stage of their development; the continuing growth of the Trust combined with ensuring that the quality and consistency of service delivery to existing schools and activities is sustained and developed, continues to create rewarding opportunities which will make a difference.

This is a new role, adding to the existing team of Management Accountants supporting a continually growing Trust.

You will work as part of a team of Management Accountants, focused on the financial management, control and planning of the schools and businesses operating within the Trust. 

You will be responsible for (this is not an exhaustive list):

• Management accounting and control for a number of locations (i.e schools) and trust wide services and activities.
• Financial planning (rolling three++ year projections) of all grant and earned income streams, and functional cost centres spanning education and curriculum, facilities and estates, IT, contracted services, and central services.
• Integrity of books and records, ensuring tight control over nominal and cost centre accounting, and all balance sheet accounts including control accounts.
• Financial planning and control of capital expenditure across all locations
• Business partnering with leaders of catering services, preschools, regional teacher training, and other business units, pertinent to the locations and entities you manage
• Re-forecasting of all income and expenditure throughout the year, managing rightly the overall financial outcome of the location.
• Scenario planning with educational leaders to adapt to changing demands.
• Partnering with a human capital accountants to ensure that overall financial planning and forecasting requirements, limitations and interdependencies are understood and controlled.

Your experience and your aptitude:

• You are adept and enjoy working with detail hands on as well as business partnering. You are comfortable moving up and down this spectrum of activity as matter of course.
• Your core skill is financial control and process control – accuracy. You are confident in this regard, and will take responsibility for the information produced by you and your team. You are self-reliant.
• You will be an experienced Management Accountant, used to working with large quantities of information, and be highly skilled with excel and related tools.
• You thrive on multi-tasking, and managing competing demands.
• You will be a least 1-3 years post qualification (in a non-audit role), or you will be able to demonstrate your qualification-by-experience (QBE).

Contract details:

• The role is offered up to £45,000 per annum, depending on experience.
• Eligible to join Local Government Pension Scheme, for which employer contribution is 21.9%.
• 25 days annual leave entitlement, (rising by 3, 1, 1, 1 after 5,10,15,20 years’ service), plus bank holidays
• Permanent full time role, 37 hours per week contracted hours.
• The role is available on a 100% remote basis (UK based), 100% in the office, or a hybrid of the two. (The office base is Newton Abbot, Devon).