Our institute is involved in numerous projects, both national and international.
When managing projects, one of the main responsibilities concerns dealing with money, so the video will show how budget preparation work in the planning phase.
Our school very often responds to the calls issued
by Indire, a reference institute for educational research in Italy, or to European Union calls.
Such calls are usually in line with the educational needs of our institution, which considers foreign mobility a strong motivation for students’ personal and professional growth.
Each call assigns specific funds based on the criteria and the priorities specified in the call itself, and the school divides the entire amount received (overall budget) into different sections that will be immediately taken into consideration.
The first step is the IDENTIFICATION of the teachers who will be involved in the mobility: a special designation is made by the headteacher.
The costs concerning teachers will flow into the Direct Costs under the "Staff" label. This item is the most substantial, as it contains the remuneration for various professional figures, relating to the working days employed.
The staff costs include the Manager, that is the school manager, the costs for the Teachers, or the protagonists of mobility, the costs for the Technical staff, such as IT technicians, and the costs for the Administrative staff, or the DSGA - General and Administrative Services Manager, and for those who deal with the logistic support and bureaucratic aspects of the mobility.
A substantial part of the budget is allocated to Travel, which accounts for the payment of the several travels included in the project: this part is fixed, previously established directly by the project call, and is used to cover travel, stays and the payment of stays even for accompanying teachers.
Another entry is intended for other expenses (Equipment), relating to stationery, posters, eventual rent of rooms or catering.
A different item of the budget concerns indirect costs, relating to electricity, gas, internet and utilities in general.
Very few budget entries can be decided by the school, on its own, as the calls issued are always very detailed and clear as far as the budget is concerned.
However, there is often a section (Other) with a lump sum that the school can use at its own will. If this section is not present, the call does not allow for discretion. In recent years, the European Union has been trying to standardize spending, to make fraud or incorrect payments more difficult.
Depending on the call, there may be an additional section, called "Co-Funding", which specifies the co-financing provided by the school, which can be inserted through the teachers’ working hours or with benefits made available by the school, such as the rent of a restaurant or a computer lab.
At the end of the mobility, the lead institution of the project collects all the documents and creates a detailed report to be presented to the auditors and to the European Union, organizer of the call.
That’s how the budget in the planning phase basically works in our institution.
