Executive Officer
The Role:
- Assignment Start Date: 13th January 2025
- Rate of Pay: £15.17ph - Weekly pay
- Hours: 37 per week, Monday - Friday
- Shift Times: 9am to 5pm
- Location: Bishopsgate House, Feethams, Darlington DL1 5QE
- Working arrangements: Office Based Full Time
Department Background:
Join the Department for Education's Sector Reporting division, where you'll play a pivotal role in using data collections to ensure 11,000 academies and Further Education colleges meet their budgeting and financial management obligations.
Be part of the team producing the Academy Sector Annual Report and Account (SARA), a key consolidation of financial statements from 2,500 academy trusts, providing Parliament with a comprehensive overview of England's academy sector. This involves applying consistent accounting policies and making critical judgements to ensure the correct accounting for assets, liabilities, income and expenditure across the sector, so meeting the requirements of the Academies Act 2010 and relevant accounting standards.
Role description:
Brook Street is recruiting on behalf of the Department for Education for a role within their finance team. The position involves validating data from the academies sector as part of two large-scale exercises. You'll apply prescribed checks to review the internal consistency of the returns as well as checking to corroborating evidence from other sources.
Key responsibilities include:
- Reviewing land and buildings information for approximately 10,000 academy schools to determine asset recognition for a £60 billion property portfolio, ensuring compliance with accounting requirements.
- Validating financial accounting returns from around 2,500 academy trusts to support one of the largest accounts consolidation exercises in the UK public sector.
This role also includes other finance-related tasks and offers full training. Familiarity with company accounts is desirable but not essential.
Essential criteria
- Good interpersonal skills, both written and verbal, with an ability to interact well with people at different levels across the team
- Ability to work under pressure and deliver to tight timescales, with a good attention to detail.
- Ability to work independently with minimal supervision, seeking advice and guidance from managers as appropriate.
- Literacy, numeracy, and an ability to follow the logical steps of a prescribed process in an organised way, and record clear, concise notes on findings.
- Competent IT user with good experience of using Microsoft Excel, and exposure to Outlook, Teams and other office applications, and willingness to use unfamiliar tools with training.
Desirable criteria
- Experience of or training in financial accounting and/or wider finance operations
- Experience of Microsoft Dynamics CRM (a customer relationship management tool)
*PLEASE NOTE - To progress with your application, you will be asked to complete a Literacy, Numeracy and Excel assessment. Should you be successful in this application, you will be required to provide right to work documents and references to cover the past 3 years in full.*
Brook Street is proud to support the Armed Forces Covenant and as such, we guarantee to interview all candidates who are veterans or spouses/partners of military personnel, and who meet all the essential criteria for the vacancy.
As a Disability Confident Leader, and holder of the Gold Award status from the Defence Employer Recognition Scheme, Brook Street, as a supplier to the Public Sector Resourcing Framework (PSR), will offer you a guaranteed interview with a PSR Sourcer.
Should you identify as a candidate with a disability and/or as a veteran or spouse/partner of military personnel and meet all the essential criteria for the role, we encourage you to reach out to us via the Brook Street website. Here you will find a link to register your interest and state the role that you are interested in. We are committed to engaging with you.
In cases where we have a high volume of ex-military candidates/military spouses/partners, who meet all of the essential criteria, Brook Street will interview the best candidates from within that group.