Our recommendations

Results of the 2022 school audits.

We recommend that the Ministry of Education:

  1. prioritise completing its project on the future of school financial reporting;
  2. follow up with Education Payroll Limited to ensure that additional functions are developed and communicated to schools as indicated in the current guidance on school payroll processes and controls, so that schools are able to check and approve all transactions;
  3. ensure that schools comply with their property planning requirement to have up-to-date cyclical maintenance plans and review those plans to assess whether they are reasonable and consistent with schools’ asset condition assessments and planned capital works;
  4. communicate more effectively with schools, including putting controls in place to prevent draft guidance from being sent to schools before it is finalised and approved;
  5. contact schools that have not previously prepared full budgets and support them to complete full budgets for the next school year; and
  6. review the requirements of Residual Agents to ensure that the financial statements of closed schools can be audited in a timely manner.