College Accounts Direction 2025 to 2026 Updated Guidance

Guidance

College accounts direction

How to prepare and submit annual report and financial statements (accounts) to the Department for Education.

From: Department for Education Published 2 March 2017 Last updated 15 April 2026
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Applies to England

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Documents

College accounts direction 2025 to 2026

PDF, 382 KB, 36 pages

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College accounts direction 2024 to 2025

PDF, 1.23 MB, 34 pages

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Regularity self-assessment questionnaire 2025 to 2026

MS Word Document, 72.5 KB

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Finance record for 2024 to 2025

MS Excel Spreadsheet, 398 KB

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Proposed timeline for upcoming college financial returns

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Details

The guidance and requirements in the college accounts direction do not apply to specialist further education (FE) colleges funded by the Department for Education (DfE) as ‘Special post 16 institutions’ (SPIs), which are often described as FE colleges.

College accounts direction for 2025 to 2026

The college accounts direction for the year 2025 to 2026 sets out DfE ’s financial reporting requirements for:

• further education colleges
• sixth form colleges
• institutions established or designated under the provisions of the Further and Higher Education Act 1992 (designated institutions) The updates made to the college accounts direction since last year are captured at the beginning of this new edition.

The accounts direction outlines the requirements for each college to:

• prepare audited accounts to 31 July 2026
• submit accounts and associated documents to DfE by 31 December 2026
• publish accounts on the college’s website as soon as possible after signing but no later than 31 January 2027 You must refer to the college accounts direction 2025 to 2026 when preparing your accounts.

If you have concerns about meeting the 31 December submission deadline, you should contact your DfE place-based team contact as soon as possible and prior to the submission deadline.

You, rather than your auditors, will need to submit all required documents by following the submission process below.

Finance Record for 2024 to 2025

Complete the Finance Record for 2024 to 2025 and submit it with your audited annual report and accounts for the college financial year 2024 to 2025.

The ‘Finance record for 2024 to 2025’ is not accessible because of missing alternative text, hard to read text contrast and the use of merged cells. This means it does not meet web content accessibility guidelines success criteria criterion 1.1.1 non-text content, 1.3.1 info and relationships and 1.4.3 contrast. Our teams are working to fix this or provide an alternative which should be available by 30 November 2026.

Submitting your documents

Your financial statements for 2025 to 2026 and associated documents must be submitted through the College financial data (CFD) service. This requires a DfE Sign-in account.

Once you have logged in you will be able to upload your documents by clicking on ‘start’ and choosing:

• ‘Annual financial statements return’

• the year the submission is being made for
  The mandatory elements must initially be uploaded at the same time, but can be resubmitted separately, if required. These are:

• audited annual report and financial statements

• external auditor’s audit findings report

• finance record

• audit committee annual report

• non-dormant subsidiary financial statements (if required)
  There is also an option to upload additional supporting documentation if applicable. You will receive email confirmation that your upload has been successful.

Further details are available within the submission portal. If the person responsible for submitting these documents does not have access to DfE Sign-in they should follow the instructions to Create a DfE Sign-in account.

If you have any questions about your submission, contact us using the Customer Help Portal.

Regularity self-assessment questionnaire

The regularity self-assessment questionnaire must be completed by:

• further education colleges
• sixth-form colleges

• designated institutions
  It must be signed by the:

• accounting officer

• chair of governors
  The questionnaire must be shared with the college’s external auditor to help inform the regularity assurance engagement.

Further guidance or requirements may be issued as required by DfE.

Updates to this page

Published 2 March 2017 Last updated 15 April 2026 show all updates
1.
15 April 2026

Added 'Regularity self-assessment questionnaire 2025 to 2026'.
2.
25 March 2026

Added 'College accounts direction 2025 to 2026’.
3.
5 November 2025

Added 'Finance record for 2024 to 2025'.
4.
26 March 2025

Added 'College accounts direction 2023 to 2024' and 'Regularity self- assessment questionnaire 2023 to 2024'. Updated 'Proposed timeline for upcoming college financial returns'.
5.
6 November 2024

Added 'Finance record for 2023 to 2024'.
6.
6 August 2024

Updated 'College account direction 2023 to 2024' to clarify how documents should be submitted.
7.
27 March 2024

Added 'College accounts direction 2023 to 2024', updated 'Proposed timeline for upcoming college financial returns' and updated the DfE sign-in link for submissions.
8.
8 November 2023

We've published the finance record for 2022 to 2023 and have updated the proposed timeline for upcoming college financial returns.
9.
26 April 2023

We have published the college accounts direction for 2022 to 2023. We have also updated the proposed timeline for upcoming financial returns.
10.
8 November 2022

Added Finance record for 2021 to 2022
11.
30 March 2022

We have published the college accounts direction for 2021 to 2022. A full list of changes is provided in the summary.
12.
10 November 2021

We have updated the Finance Record template and the proposed timeline for upcoming college financial returns.
13.
31 March 2021

We have published the College Accounts Direction for the year 2020 to 2021. You can read the changes made to this document in the "What's changed in the 2021 edition" section.
14.
9 December 2020

We have published an updated version of the finance record for 2019 to 2020. Details of the update are on the contents page of the finance record under ‘version control’.
15.
2 December 2020

We have published the finance record for colleges to submit with their audited annual report and accounts for the college financial year 2019 to 2020, and version 2 of the college accounts direction. A list of changes made can be found in the document.
16.
30 September 2020

We have published our proposed timeline for college financial returns during 2020 to 2021.
17.
26 August 2020

We have updated this page to reflect the changes in deadlines for colleges to submit their documents to ESFA. The deadline for colleges to submit these documents to ESFA has now been extended to 31 January 2021. Colleges will then have until 28 February 2021 to publish their audited accounts on their website.
18.
20 May 2020

We have published the college accounts direction for 2019 to 2020.
19.
18 November 2019

Update to gov.uk page to provide colleges with details of the submission arrangements for the Financial Statements by the 31st December 19.
20.
31 October 2019

We have published the college finance record template.
21.
27 February 2019

We have published the college accounts direction for 2018 to 2019.
22.
26 October 2018

We have updated the finance record template 2018.
23.
9 October 2018

We have published the college finance record for 2017 to 2018, which further education and sixth-form colleges must complete and return to ESFA by 31 December 2018.
24.
29 March 2018

College accounts direction for 2017 to 2018 has now been added.
25.
29 November 2017

Updated section added Submitting your accounts and associated documents
26.
6 October 2017

We've now published the finance record 2016 to 2017 template.
27.
2 March 2017

First published.

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