18 September 2020 
Matt Sisson, Projects and Membership Manager
We are delighted to announce that the much anticipated BUFDG Guide to Accounting for Pensions in Higher Education has been published today (18th September). Miles Hedges, who retired as Finance Director at The Open University in 2016, has written the guide to help explain what to many is a mystery. It is written for university governors, non-accounting staff, students, staff representatives and student representatives as well as for Finance Directors and colleagues in finance teams tasked with producing financial statements and accompanying notes.
The Guide is not a 30-minute quick-read to furnish the reader with full understanding of a topic that takes accountants many hours to learn. Rather, it is designed to help readers who start with different levels of understanding to navigate the numbers and extensive notes to the accounts to appreciate why pension schemes can cause significant impacts on universities’ reported results and reserves. The technical content of the chapters increases and we don’t expect all readers will read to the very last chapter. Each chapter can be the end, depending on the reader’s appetite and requirement for knowledge. To the enthusiastic and determined reader, however, perseverance to the end, several times, will be rewarded by a new level of understanding.
This Guide is not a commentary on the rights or wrongs of pension schemes’ funding strategies or their valuation methods and is written with the aim of improving understanding of financial statements and universities’ financial positions. We also hope that it will equip readers with enough knowledge to ask more questions. Please feel free to share and circulate the guide freely. Feedback is very welcome.
