The Schools Financial Survey has been operating for over twenty five years, using consistent definitions based on Government annual Financial Questionnaires, Staff census and audited accounts. This helps assure data accuracy and validity and therefore consistent comparisons with others in your benchmarking samples.
For participant security, all information is kept confidential to Somerset Education and report formats do not allow others to specifically identify your school.
With about 700 schools in the survey, you should find similar benchmarking partners. Participation starts from as little as $792 including GST or $396 including GST for schools of less than 200 students.
Through your individual somerset portal you have access to a suite of self-service tools
- Enter data into the current year’s survey which is available from April each year.
- Select samples of similar schools based on geographic, funding level, enrolments, religious/pedagogical affiliation, single sex/co-educational, primary, secondary, P-12, IB, Multi Campus. Or gather a group of similar schools and start a private benchmarking group.
- Generate Reports to analyse and quantify your performance with benchmarking partners in over 50 ratios to identify strengths and areas for improvement. Reports are available from August each year and include numbers, graphs and written interpretations.
- IT Benchmarking report compares key IT staffing, recurrent and capital expenditure with similar schools.
- Staff Estimator uses sample averages to indicate staff numbers for your school based on enrolments entered.
- Historical report in 50 ratios for your school for up to six years from past surveys.
- SKI Report which analyses a selection of key indicators for your school from the previous two years and up to five future years. On one page, this simple report compares your performance with similar schools as well past and future trends. An excellent strategic planning tool.
- GEO Mapping provides access to web based potential enrolment demographic mapping tools. See instructions and video
- PeopleBench provides a unique Culture Tracker™ tool to assist in capturing data to assist you with the decision making processes for your school. See instructions and video