What is assurance mapping?

Discover the key benefits of assurance mapping when developing and producing your board assurance framework, and how as a result will support achieving your academy’s strategic objectives.

Assurance mapping is a key part of developing and maintaining board assurance arrangements and producing a BAF. It provides an academy with an improved ability to understand and confirm that they have assurance over key controls or where control gaps exist and whether actions are in place to address these gaps.

The assurance mapping process and the way of illustrating the results using a BAF can give confidence to management and the board that they ‘Do really know what they think they know’.

The assurance mapping process identifies and records the key sources of assurance that inform governors of the effectiveness of how key strategic risks are managed or mitigated, and of the key controls and processes that are relied on to manage risks and as a result support in the achievement of your academy’s strategic objectives.

Sources of assurance could include, but are not limited to:

reviews or checks within a department (eg a manager reviews information completed by staff under their particular area of responsibility);

• an academy wide review (e.g. a review of sickness and absence);
• internal audit reports; or
• inspection /review by an external body (e.g. Ofsted, external audit).

The above examples are far from exhaustive and when you start looking you will find that you receive assurances from a whole host of sources, both internal and external.