Exeter Mathematics School
A school running close to its own reserves ceiling, a small boarding operation nursing its own deficit, and a pension surplus the balance sheet isn't allowed to show.
Who files the accounts
Exeter Mathematics School is its own single-academy trust — a company limited by guarantee and exempt charity that files its own audited accounts, separate from the University of Exeter and Exeter College.
The accounts, year by year
The most recent filed accounts (2023/24, year ended 31 August 2024) show a net result of −£33k.
| 2013/14 (first period) | 2014/15 | 2015/16 | 2016/17 | 2017/18 | 2018/19 | 2019/20 | 2020/21 | 2021/22 | 2022/23 | 2023/24 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total income | £2.56m | £678k | £1.10m | £1.27m | £1.18m | £1.38m | £1.59m | £1.64m | £1.87m | £2.07m | £2.23m |
| of which ESFA / DfE core grant (GAG) | — | £236k | £635k | £834k | £761k | £863k | £868k | £948k | £1.00m | £384k | £382k |
| Total expenditure | £243k | £676k | £1.09m | £1.26m | £1.26m | £1.43m | £1.55m | £1.73m | £1.93m | £2.06m | £2.26m |
| of which staff costs | £104k | £308k | £509k | £638k | £673k | £775k | £891k | £1.02m | £1.17m | £1.22m | £1.36m |
| Net result for the year | +£2.31m | +£2.3k | +£1.7k | +£6.0k | −£76k | −£51k | +£44k | −£89k | −£62k | +£10k | −£33k |
| Total funds carried forward | £2.31m | £2.31m | £2.25m | £2.27m | £2.24m | £2.14m | £2.17m | £2.01m | £2.40m | £2.48m | £2.43m |
| …of which pension (LGPS) surplus/(deficit) | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | £0 |
| Average staff (headcount) | — | 8 | 13 | 17 | 20 | 22 | 23 | 28 | 30 | 30 | 33 |
| Pupils (per the report) | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | 127 |
Figures as stated in each year's filed annual report and financial statements; see sources for the documents.
2013/14 (first period) → 2014/15 → 2015/16 → 2016/17 → 2017/18 → 2018/19 → 2019/20 → 2020/21 → 2021/22 → 2022/23 → 2023/24
DfE benchmarking
2024/25 summary: in-year balance −£72,000, revenue reserve £573,000. Teaching & teaching-support staff cost £10,469 per pupil (higher than 96.6% of comparable post-16 schools nationally); administrative supplies £1,242/pupil (higher than 100% of comparators). Pupil:teacher ratio 10.62. FBIT's summary view doesn't expose a total income/expenditure figure. See the school's page on the DfE Financial Benchmarking and Insights Tool (latest year: 2024/25).
Pay disclosures
Academy trusts and charities must disclose senior pay in salary bands in their audited accounts. The most recent disclosure (2023/24) reads:
Headteacher K Burnham: £85,000–£90,000 (2023: £80,000–£85,000); employer's pension contributions £20,000–£25,000. Assistant Headteacher F Thomas (also a Trustee): £35,000–£40,000. One other employee: £60,001–£70,000.
Reproduced exactly as banded in the filed accounts — the documents disclose bands, not exact salaries, and so do we.
Notable items in the accounts
- 2023/24: Ofsted rated the school Outstanding overall following its March 2024 inspection.
- 2023/24: 71% of students achieved AAB or better with two facilitating subjects in 2023/24 — up from 53% the year before, and the highest proportion of A/A* grades in the school's history.
- 2023/24: The £382,471 GAG figure is the General Annual Grant line only; total DfE/ESFA education funding (GAG plus 16–19 funding, Teachers' Pay Grant and other grants) was £1,346,999.
- 2023/24: The core school (excluding boarding) ran an in-year deficit of £36,080, against a £69,076 surplus the year before; boarding carried its own smaller cumulative deficit of £6,152.
- 2023/24: Free reserves of £644,686 sat slightly above the Trust's own £600,000 policy ceiling.
- 2023/24: The LGPS pension scheme has an actuarial surplus of £54,000 that isn't recognised on the balance sheet — accounting rules leave it off, not the school's choice.
- 2022/23: GAG drops sharply to £383,816 from £1,002,516 the year before — not a funding cut, but a presentational change: 16–19 Funding (£717,833) and the Teachers' Pay and Pension Grant are now reported as separate DfE/ESFA lines rather than bundled into GAG. Total DfE/ESFA education grants were £1,196,803 — the same split already documented for 2023/24.
- 2022/23: Total funds carried forward passed £2.48m, the highest year-end balance in the school's history to that point.
- 2021/22: A large pension actuarial gain pushed total funds up to £2.4m despite an underlying operating deficit.
- 2020/21: Boarding provision ran a deficit explicitly attributed to COVID-19 disruption; ESFA approved using unrestricted funds to help offset it.
- 2020/21: The defined benefit pension liability more than doubled, from £276,000 to £407,000, driving most of the year's fund decline. Staff costs passed £1m for the first time.
- 2019/20: Year ended during the first phase of the COVID-19 pandemic; a return to surplus on income over expenditure after two deficit years.
- 2018/19: Second consecutive deficit year as staff costs rose to £775,336.
- 2017/18: GAG fell back to £760,832 from £834,447 the year before even as staff costs kept rising, driving the year into deficit.
- 2016/17: The first year the school posted a surplus on income over expenditure since opening.
- 2015/16: GAG income nearly tripled year-on-year as the school scaled up with a second year-group.
- 2014/15: First full year of teaching following the school's September 2014 opening. GAG (£236,164) was the largest single restricted income line alongside a Start-up Grant (£195,920) and an Outreach grant (£143,457).
- 2013/14 (first period): The Trust's first accounting period, 3 May 2013 to 31 August 2014, covered site setup only — the school itself opened for teaching just after this period ended.
- 2013/14 (first period): Income was dominated by capital and start-up grants: £1,842,729 in capital grants plus £390,000 of voluntary income/property transfer.
- 2013/14 (first period): All £242,733 of expenditure was support and governance costs — no direct education spending yet, since teaching hadn't begun.
Sources
- 1.Exeter Mathematics School — Companies House filing history — find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/08515877/filing-history
- 2.Annual report and financial statements, year ended 31 August 2024 — exetermathematicsschool.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/2024-Accounts.pdf (text-searchable PDF hosted on the school's own site)
- 3.Annual reports and financial statements, years ended 31 August 2014–2023 — find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/08515877/filing-history (scanned filings, read as page images; 2021–2023 copies also hosted on the school's own site)
- 4.DfE Financial Benchmarking and Insights Tool — financial-benchmarking-and-insights-tool.education.gov.uk/school/140971/summary (URN 140971)
What we could not verify: Companies House shows accounts filed to 31 August 2025, but no text-searchable copy of that newer year was available on the school's own site at research time (only 2023/24 has been posted) — so 2023/24 is the latest year shown.; Pupil roll numbers weren't found in any year's SOFA, balance sheet, funding or staff notes (2014/15–2022/23) — that would need each year's narrative Trustees'/Governors' report read in full, which wasn't done exhaustively across 10 filings.; 2013/14's staff headcount and full staff note are missing from the Companies House scan itself — the filing's printed page numbering jumps from 19 to 21, skipping a page.; Senior pay bands (keyPay) were only confidently captured for 2014/15, 2020/21, 2021/22, 2022/23 (below) and 2023/24 — not chased down for 2015/16–2019/20.; Every year's closing funds figure chains into the next year's opening balance exactly (accounting for pension actuarial movements), including into the already-published 2023/24 figures — a strong cross-check across the whole run.; The individual ESFA 16–19 funding allocation figure lives only inside a large multi-thousand-row DfE spreadsheet, not a per-school lookup page, and wasn't pulled this pass..
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