Levelling Up Internal Scrutiny and Audit

Every academy trust is required to have internal scrutiny and a financial audit in place. The critical question for trustees and leaders is whether these arrangements genuinely reflect best practice - or simply meet the minimum standard.

This session focuses on how trusts can level up the audit and internal scrutiny provision they receive. It explores what strong, value-adding assurance looks like in practice, how expectations should evolve as trusts grow in size and complexity, and how to recognise when current arrangements are no longer providing the level of challenge, insight, or assurance the organisation needs.

The risk of failing to level up is rarely sudden or dramatic. More often, it presents as quiet drift: assurance becomes routine, familiar issues remain unchallenged, and weaknesses sit in plain sight. By the time they surface meaningfully, time, money, or reputation may already be at risk.

Rather than focusing on technical audit detail or theory, this session is designed to help trustees and senior leaders sense-check the quality, depth, and impact of the assurance they rely on - and to build confidence in making informed decisions about continuity, re-scoping, or change.

In this session we explore

• Why minimum compliance is not enough

• What strong, risk-based assurance looks like in practice

• How growth changes what you should ask for, and what good challenge looks like

• When to push, re-scope, re-tender, or change provider

Take-home points

• A quick framework to rate the quality and impact of your current assurance

• Questions that test independence, depth, and added value

• Indicators it is time to evolve, without adding unnecessary burden

This session is for

CFOs, COOs, finance and compliance leads, plus audit and risk committee members who want assurance that keeps pace with the scale and risk profile of their trust.

Vicky Butters