Pre-16 Assurance Manager

About the role

The Department for Education is recruiting a Pre-16 Assurance Manager for its Pre-16 Assurance Team in the Assurance Division of the Funding and Financial Oversight Directorate. The team provides regularity assurance over about £77 billion of grant funding paid to local authorities, local-maintained schools, academy trust schools and early years providers, to both the DfE Accounting Officer and the National Audit Office. The manager leads the overall assurance plan and takes lead responsibility for several critical assurance projects, including local authority and academy financial regularity assurance.

Key responsibilities

• Lead the planning, delivery and reporting of pre-16 assurance work strands, own team outputs and develop risk-based assurance plans.
• Oversee the local authority regularity assurance programme (annual reports, grant returns, audit plans and reports) and the academy financial regularity assurance programme.
• Evaluate assurance findings and grant data to identify trends, risks and control weaknesses, and ensure grants are used as intended.
• Liaise with the NAO Audit Team on the regularity audit of grants.
• Lead the escalation and reporting of significant risks and contribute to the Grants Transformation Programme Risk and Assurance strand.
• Work with policy, funding, finance and commercial teams to improve assurance practices and communicate findings to audited bodies and senior leaders.
• Create a high-performing, inclusive team culture, manage performance and support professional development.

Required profile

• Extensive experience in assurance, audit, risk management, governance and control environments.
• Proven ability to lead teams and deliver improvements to processes, controls and assurance arrangements.
• Strong stakeholder management, communication and prioritisation skills.
• Part-time or compressed working patterns are welcomed; the minimum is 30 hours per week over four days.

Required skills

• Designing and implementing audit and assurance strategies for complex transactions.
• Analyzing audit evidence and producing evidence-based recommendations.
• Desirable: knowledge of education, academy and local authority financial governance, government grant management standards and regularity requirements.
• Desirable: CCAB or equivalent qualified accountant (e.g. ICAEW, ICAS, ACCA, CIPFA, CIMA).