Guidance

Financial benchmarking tool for colleges

A tool to help colleges compare their financial performance with others in the sector.

From:
Department for Education and Education and Skills Funding Agency
Published
10 April 2017
Last updated
274 MayJune 20262025 — See all updates

Applies to England

Documents

College financial benchmarking tool: guidance

HTML

College benchmarking tool for the financial year 20242023 to 20252024

MS Excel Spreadsheet, 8.728.84 MB

Details

ThisThe financialEducation benchmarkingand toolSkills andFunding accompanyingAgency guidance(ESFA) isclosed for:on 31 March 2025. All activity has moved to the Department for Education (DfE). You should continue to follow this guidance.

The intended audience for this page is:

  • sixth-form and further education college corporations
  • institutions designated under Section 28 of the Further and Higher Education Act 1992 as being in the further education sector

For the purposes of this guidance,page, these are collectively referred to as ‘colleges’.

Bodies funded by the Department for Education (DfE) as ‘special post-16 institutions’ (sometimes described as ‘colleges’) are not in scope, unless they are a subsidiary of one of the previously listed organisations.

You can filter the benchmark population based on certain criteria. The tool provides several benchmarking reports, trend analysis and access to the underlying datasets.

The latest version of the tool includes data submitted in colleges’ finance records for the years:

  • 20242023 to 20252024
  • 20232022 to 20242023

Additional information on DfE’sDfE’s financial reporting requirements for colleges is set out in our college accounts direction.

Updates to this page

Published 10 April 2017
Last updated 274 MayJune 20262025 + show all updates

  1. Added 'College benchmarking tool for the financial year 2024 to 2025'.

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