Education Executive April 2022 by Intelligent Media Solutions

ISSUE 165

EDUCATION EXECUTIVE PUTTING YOUR SUPPLIERS ON NOTICE Have you ever signed and cancelled a contract on the same day?

Supporting business and f inancial excellence in schools and academies April 2022

EDEXEC LIVE 2022: MEET THE SPEAKERS!

FINANCIAL FORECASTING IN AN UNCERTAIN WORLD

Your chance to meet our stellar line-up of speakers

Husham Khan analyses the financial difficulties schools face

STREAMLINING IT FOR THE NEXT GENERATION Why sometimes less is more when it comes to edtech

Connecting with the community We speak to an award-winning school

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Contents MANAGEMENT

NEWS Latest school business management news in brief

GET SWITCHED ON Read our article where we’ll explore what this means, particularly how unified communications technologies can be instrumental in helping you navigate this major change

HOW TO WRITE A TENDER SPECIFICATION How and when to write one

NEWS REPORT

Primary school children in Wales are targeting each other with homophobic and anti-trans abuse, a professor has warned

08 08

Homophobic abuse ‘normalised’ in primary schools

There weren’t really adults in school who I felt could see it in a positive way - with those teachers I did have a good relationship with, I was too scared to jeopardise that relationship by telling them about my sexuality.” SHOCKING FINDINGS Professor Renold, who advises the Welsh government, said the findings were “shocking” but would not be surprising to those working with schools. Alex Thomas, who supports Viva LGBTQ+ youth groups in Rhyl, Denbighshire, believes every young LGBTQ+ pupil would be affected by homophobia. “Young people are facing increased levels of oppression of isolation of bullying and negative experiences based around their identity,” he said. Director of teaching union NAHT Cymru, Laura Doel, said discrimination against LGBTQ+ pupils harmed their mental health. “School leaders will need

time, and some extra resources, as well as further training and confidence to be able to deal with these matters,” she said. Professor Renold said the new curriculum in Wales would help schools to tackle homophobic, biphobic and transphobic bullying, but a “serious investment of resources” was needed to help train teachers and create inclusive environments. The Welsh government said its new curriculum for Wales, due to start in September at some schools, would be inclusive of everyone and included a mandatory relationships and sexuality education code. It said it had commissioned training for school leaders to tackle homophobic bullying. “Any form of bullying or sexual harassment is completely unacceptable and we want to encourage any children and young people who are experiencing this kind of harassment to come forward and report it.”

April 2022

NEWS REPORT Homophobic abuse ‘normalised’ in primary schools. The number of reported cases has increased in Wales

12 CONNECTING WITH THE COMMUNITY We speak to an award-winning school

17 COGNITIVE BIAS – ARE YOU AFFECTED? Dr Fiona Aubrey-Smith explains cognitive bias LEADERSHIP BY EXAMPLE

SPOTLIGHT ON: SCHOOL FUNDING STATISTICS 2021/22 The latest data on school funding

CONTRACT GOOD PRACTICE

Putting your suppliers on notice DAVID CARNE, executive business manager at Cardinal Griffin Catholic College, explains why he signed - and cancelled - a supplier contract on the same day to ensure his school is getting best value

his week I signed - and then cancelled - a contract in the same day. No, I hadn’t made a mistake, or been let down on day one; the service we had procured would be extremely valuable to us and, because it had been wellspecified and evaluated prior to purchase, it met our requirements. So why sign it and then cancel it – had I lost my mind? Like many contracts or service level agreements, it contains a clause which means that, unless I cancel in writing, it will automatically renew in a year. While this is standard practice, it means, potentially, all the supplier has to do to secure my business next year is - nothing. While that may be great news for their sales team, I tend to think that suppliers should have to work (at least a little bit) to retain me as a customer. So, while I

am signing the paperwork agreeing to the contract, I also write to say we do not wish to automatically renew. Having a full database of your contracts that records the renewal date, the date you need to serve notice, and the relevant information you will need to run a tender exercise is crucial for good contract management - as is planning in time to tender renewals. However, not everyone has this in place, or does it as well as they might. Increasingly, suppliers are specifying longer notice periods; the worst offenders may have notice periods measured in years, not days. Missing the notice deadline by even a day could lock you in for multiple years, which is undesirable from a best value perspective. The advantages of serving notice at the same time you sign the contract include:

ing in an u nc ast ec

HUSHAM KHAN, school business leader and author, analyses the financial difficulties schools are facing and gives advice on how you can best prepare to tackle them

s I write this the conflict in Ukraine continues, rightly, to dominate the news and it almost feels insignificant to write about anything else. Governing body discussions around financial risk have continued as we gradually transition out of a pandemic into an international crisis in Eastern Europe. With so much impact on international markets (including supply chains) since Brexit and numerous lockdowns, the strain on domestic and school finances is now evident. We are in a period of significant uncertainty, which was always expected, but

28 28

GARETH HARLE, ANME member with 17 years’ experience as an IT manager in education, explains why sometimes less is more when it comes to edtech

ver the last 10 years we have seen an explosion of services and platforms available to the education sector everything from homework trackers and seating planners to parental engagement platforms. We’ve grown out of our traditional virtual learning environments (VLEs), full of Word documents and PowerPoint presentations; now we’re firmly in the realm of video conferencing lessons, online parents’ evenings and live-streaming school events. Who would have thought it? Education has always been unique in that, unlike large enterprises or multinational companies, we don’t, typically, build our own platforms.

I think we are a couple of years away until things start to settle down. By far the biggest impact on school budgets is pay inflation plus on costs; whilst the independent sector has felt the full brunt of increases over the last three years, such as employer contributions to teachers’ pensions and the new health and social care levy, the public sector has had some insulation from these increases. These have been factors within the DfE’s control; it can decide how it limits the impact on school budgets through offsets in funding. As we approach the new financial

April 2022

FINANCIAL FORECASTING IN AN UNCERTAIN WORLD Husham Khan analyses the financial difficulties schools face

30 HOW TO EXTERMINATE SCHOOL LITTER BUGS Helen Burge on why the Wombles were the original eco-warriors

32 32

There’s no custom business software built specifically to our individual institutional requirements; IT and school leaders must choose a solution from the ever-expanding market of products and services. We end up with many systems and platforms that each have a specific purpose but, for each of these systems, our IT Teams must evaluate, procure, implement, test, deploy and maintain them - and do all of this with small teams, a limited budget, and increasingly tight deadlines. The scope of our IT infrastructure has become much more comprehensive; the resources to manage and develop these infrastructures have mainly remained the same. IT support teams

LIVE IT

STREAMLINING IT

Streamlining IT for the next generation of edtech

TA C K L I N G F I N A N C E

world tain er

ardiff University’s Professor EJ Renold said they had noticed an increase in young children reporting homophobic and sexist comments. Maisie Awen said she was “terrified anyone would find out” she was gay after experiencing homophobia in school from the age of six. The Welsh government said any bullying was ‘unacceptable’. Last year an Estyn report found homophobic bullying was the most common kind in secondary schools and happened ‘all the time’. Professor Renold, who advised on that report, told BBC Wales it was “not unusual” to find antigay comments “normalised” in primary schools. “It might be more underground, but it’s going on,” they said. “You will have children who are maybe gender non-conforming who can become targets of homophobic abuse, and I would say increasingly, transphobic abuse as well.” The Estyn report in December found many LGBTQ+ pupils at secondary schools had ‘substantial personal experiences’ of homophobia, including name calling, body shaming and, in some instances, being told to kill themselves. The first time Maisie Awen, from Pembrokeshire, heard the word ‘lesbian’ it was being used as a slur at her primary school; she was about six and it was being aimed at her as a term of abuse. “[During] the whole of primary school I told my friends I had a crush on every boy, just to stay on that side of things,” she said. Maisie, now 19, realised she was gay as a teenager and had already encountered homophobia for so many years that it felt like “the end of the world”. “I was already bullied for being gay, even before I came to that conclusion myself,” she said. “I was terrified that anyone would find out.

FINANCE

I C T M AT T E R S

Financial fo r

NEWS AND VIEWS

ICT MATTERS

have become stretched and often, when staff leave, we have struggled to replace them. Our cyber security has become weaker due to the range of systems and, thus, an increased target for potential attackers. Most importantly, the quality of our user experience has often reduced. We frequently employ the stereotype that the younger generation is far more tech-savvy than we are; children today are growing up in a world of technology with a more inherent ability to adapt to multiple platforms, accounts and complex digital systems. The truth is that this isn’t always the case. I discovered during the pandemic that students are skilled in Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat, but

April 2022

STREAMLINING IT FOR THE NEXT GENERATION OF EDTECH Why sometimes less is more when it comes to edtech

34 ACHIEVING PROACTIVE EDUCATION IT SUPPORT The issues around IT support providers

36 INTRODUCING ESPORTS IN SCHOOLS Gary Henderson on why more schools should get involved

LIVE IT Close your eyes. Inhale. Count to five… now exhale. Time to take a few moments out for some light and interesting reading – a well-earned break from numbers and statistics

40 RESTORING A CULTURE OF RESPECT Val Andrew gives advice on restoring collaborative structures

42 60 SECONDS WITH Clare Skinner, business manager

EDUCATION EXECUTIVE ISSUE 165

LEADERSHIP BY EXAMPLE

NEWS & VIEWS

PUTTING YOUR SUPPLIERS ON NOTICE Have you ever signed and cancelled a contract on the same day?

Supporting business and f inancial excellence in schools and academies April 2022

EDEXEC LIVE 2022: MEET THE SPEAKERS!

FINANCIAL FORECASTING IN AN UNCERTAIN WORLD

Your chance to meet our stellar line-up of speakers

Husham Khan analyses the financial difficulties schools face

STREAMLINING IT FOR THE NEXT GENERATION Why sometimes less is more when it comes to edtech

Connecting with the community We speak to an award-winning school

April 2022

LAST CHANCE TO BOOK YOUR PLACE

PUTTING YOUR SUPPLIERS ON NOTICE Have you ever signed and cancelled a contract on the same day?

22 EDEXEC LIVE 2022: MEET THE SPEAKERS! Your chance to meet our stellar line-up of speakers

Learn more at www.edexec.co.uk/edexec-live Contact us for discounted tickets at hello@edexeclive.co.uk

On the cover CONNECTING WITH THE COMMUNITY We speak to Neil Wilson about how Waterhead Academy’s community initiatives led to them being nominated for a Tes Award, and why community is so central to the school’s ethos

Editor’s comment It’s Easter time - time for chocolate, and lots of it at that! I hope the Easter bunny has delivered some treats for you to enjoy, although I doubt they will last long; the Easter eggs in my house don’t tend to last longer than a few days, or even hours - they seem to disappear somehow… This month’s issue is very exciting for us here at EdExec as it features the speaker line-up for our EdExec LIVE events, which are just around the corner now! We have curated the line-up with the ever-changing role of the SBL in mind and we hope as many of you as possible will be able to join us and experience a day of learning and networking with your fellow SBLs from around the country. We begin the issue by placing a spotlight on school funding statistics for the 2021-22 financial year and go on to look at how one professor believes homophobic abuse is being ‘normalised’ in Welsh primary schools. Our case study this month features Waterhead Academy. We speak to Neil Wilson, assistant principal for personal development, about how their community initiatives led to them being nominated for a Tes Award, and why community is so central to the school’s ethos. We have many experts on hand in this issue to offer great, first-hand, advice from their relevant fields. Dr Fiona Aubrey-Smith explains the different types of cognitive bias that may be present in your school decision making processes and how to be aware of these. David Carne tells us why he signed and cancelled a supplier contract on the same day to ensure his school is getting best value, and Husham Khan analyses the financial difficulties schools are facing and gives advice on the best way to tackle them. Moving on to all things ICT, Gareth Harle discusses why sometimes less is more when it comes to edtech, Nigel Milligan tells us how you can achieve proactive IT support, and Gary Henderson explains why you should introduce esports into your school. We’d love to hear any suggestions you have for the magazine. If you’d like to get involved with EdExec, or if you’d like us to cover a certain topic, please do let us know. Contact eleanor@intelligentmedia.co.uk or tweet @edexec with ideas, opinions or success stories.

Education Executive is the first business management magazine written exclusively for school business managers and bursars, bringing you the latest issues affecting your role, from finance to premises, procurement to HR. EdExec delivers the lowdown on all the hottest topics in education management right here, every month.

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Editor Ellie Potter eleanor@intelligentmedia.co.uk

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ELEANOR POTTER EDITOR We want to hear from you! Is your school doing something wonderful? Do you have an opinion or experience you’d like to share? A story suggestion? Or some advice you’d like to share with your peers? Get in touch – email eleanor@intelligentmedia.co.uk

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Education Executive is published by Intelligent Media Solutions Intelligent Media, 115 Mare Street, London, E8 4RU Tel 020 3794 8555 | Fax 020 3794 8554 Email info@intelligentmedia.co.uk Web www.intelligentmedia.co.uk

Contributors The education sector can be difficult to navigate at times, and those in school business management play a pivotal role in steering schools to success. Tasked with everything from finance and procurement, to HR and admin, you keep the education cogs turning. Education Executive addresses the most pressing matters faced by SBMs, offering meaningful insights and practical advice – essentially, all you need to run your school. Our contributors, drawn from the Education Executive team and sector innovators and experts, offer invaluable business insights from both the sidelines and front line.

ELEANOR POTTER

DR FIONA AUBREY-SMITH

DAVID CARNE

NIGEL MILLIGAN

HELEN BURGE

ANDREW BLENCH

Editor Education Executive

School business professional and executive coach Cardinal Griffin Catholic College

Deputy COO The Priory Learning Trust

Director One Life Learning

IT technician manager St Herbert’s RC Primary School

SBM consultant School Business Partner

NEWS STORIES RESOURCES EXPERT BLOGS

EDUCATION EXECUTIVE

NEWS AND VIEWS

NEWS

The latest news and views from the world of education

@UnofficalOA: I don’t know who needs to hear this, but leaving your mug in the staffroom sink ‘to soak’ is not the same as washing up after yourself.

DfE did nothing to help schools ditch plastics, say campaigners The UK government has failed to back up its call for schools to ditch plastic, say campaigners, despite setting a 2022 target. Three years ago Damian Hinds, the then education secretary, challenged headteachers in England to ditch disposables such as straws, bottles, bags and food packaging by this year; but campaigners say that, without tangible targets, funded resources and a realistic strategy, this goal is still a long way off. After the announcement the environmental charities Surfers Against Sewage (SAS) and Kids Against Plastic (KAP) saw a flurry of interest from teachers and pupils wanting to join their school-based initiatives. About 4,500 schools have signed up to programmes, but these represent just 14% of UK schools. The guidance was “much too vague”, according to Amy Meek, who co-founded KAP with her sister Ella in 2017 and launched the Plastic Clever Schools initiative in spring 2018; so far, more than 1,300 schools have signed up to the initiative. Another 3,174 schools have signed up to the Plastic Free Schools programme established by SAS in September 2017.

@sbarrett92: Excited to finally announce that, after Easter, I will be taking up my new post as COO of @DCAT211 Multi Academy Trust. Will be sad to see my current school behind, but they are being left in a safe pair of hands. Onwards and upwards! #sbltwitter #sbl

April 2022

Schools too often reluctant to report child sexual abuse, inquiry finds The report into abuse at residential schools is the 19th produced by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse. It focuses on abuse in residential schools in England and Wales and found that, despite improvements to safeguarding over the last two decades, children continued to be sexually abused - in some cases by teachers who exploit positions of trust. While many of the cases of sexual abuse occurred years ago, the inquiry panel stressed that recent testimonies on the Everyone’s Invited website showed that for children in some schools sexual abuse, and harassment between peers, remained endemic. The report warned that schools were not as safe for children as they should be and schools needed to accept ‘it could happen here’ and, in the case of peer-to-peer abuse, ‘it probably is happening here’.

NEWS

NEWS AND VIEWS

News in brief

Staff increase to support special education needs in Manx schools More teachers and support staff will be hired to support Isle of Man students with special education needs, the education minister has said; about £2.7m has been set aside in the latest government budget to increase specialist help available in schools. In a consultation held last year parents and teachers said the current provision was ‘not particularly effective’. Julie Edge, Manx minister for education, sport and culture, said the funding was a start in an area that “has had challenges”. A lack of resources, training, and flexibility in some schools were listed as barriers by those who took part in the survey. Around 60% of the 500 respondents said existing support, “did not meet the learning and development needs of children”.

Petition started to address SEND fines The mother of a boy with autism wants to change the way parents of children with suspected special educational needs or disability (SEND) are treated when their children do not attend school. In a petition to education secretary Nadhim Zahawi, Susan Liverman says parents of children who have yet to have a diagnosis are particularly vulnerable to fines, or the threat of them, unless they get their children back into education. Susan, from Corby, Northamptonshire, started the petition after her nine-year-old son Arthur was unable to go to school due to extreme anxiety and panic attacks. “Last year Arthur had an autistic breakdown; we didn’t know that was what it was at the time, as he wasn’t diagnosed with autism. He has now been diagnosed with autism and is recovering from that breakdown. I felt the treatment we had, and continue to have, was just not fit-for-purpose and put more pressure on us as a family.”

Increase in home schooling since start of pandemic There has been an increase in the number of children being permanently educated at home particularly across the west of England since the beginning of the pandemic. The number of parents choosing to home school their children has increased by 34% in England over the last two years. In Wiltshire, the figure has gone up by 23%, and by 45% in Bath and North East Somerset over the same period. Steve Chalke, founder of Oasis Community Learning, which runs 52 schools across the country, including nine in the west of England, said that although educating a child at home may be “tempting” it is no replacement for going to school. “Being in school is the best place for every child. You need varied input from different people because school is also about socialisation. It’s about skills you can only learn in a group,” he said.

@MoreMorrow: Never take for granted the importance and dedication of our wider education teams. The site staff, cleaners, administrators, business and finance leads, caterers and those deemed support are the absolute lifeblood of all we do.

April 2022

NEWS AND VIEWS

NEWS REPORT

Primary school children in Wales are targeting each other with homophobic and anti-trans abuse, a professor has warned

April 2022

Homophobic abuse ‘normalised’ in primary schools

NEWS

NEWS AND VIEWS

SPOTLIGHT ON

School funding statistics 2021-22 financial year

An overview of school funding statistics for the last financial year

he total amount of funding allocated to English schools for five-to-16 year old pupils has grown since 2010-11 as the total pupil population has also grown. In cash terms, the total funding allocated to schools through the grants covered in this report is £53.5bn in 2022-23, an increase of 53% compared to the £35bn allocated in 2010-11. The Spending Review outcome means funding will increase further in 2023-24 and 2024-25. On a per-pupil basis, the total funding allocated to schools for five-to-16 year old pupils, in cash terms in 2022-23, was

£6,970 - a 35% increase compared to the £5,180 allocated per pupil in 2010-11. When adjusted for inflation, funding per pupil was broadly flat between 2010-11 and 2015-16 at just under £6,400 in 2021-22 prices. It then fell by 4.0% over 201617 and 2017-18, but subsequently increased by 1.4% over 2018-19 and 2019-20. Since then funding increased by 4.5% over the course of 2020-21 and 2021-22 and then by a further 4.2% in 2022-23, reaching £6,780 (in 2021-22 prices).

Time period

Per pupil funding, 2021-22 terms, cumulative growth since 2010-11, %

Per pupil Pupil numer, FTE funding, 2021-22 terms, cumulative growth since 2015-16, %

School funding, 2021-22 terms, cumulative growth since 2010-11, %

School funding, 2021-22 terms, cumulative growth since 2015-16, %

School funding, cash terms, annual growth in funding, %

2010-11

6,761,000

2011-12

0.2%

6,788,000

0.6%

2.1%

2012-13

6,834,000

1.1%

2.5%

2013-14

-0.3%

6,902,000

1.7%

2014-15

0.3%

6,967,000

3.3%

2.7%

2015-16

0.4%

7,063,000

4.9%

2.2%

2016-17

-2%

-2.4%

7,183,000

4.1%

-0.8%

1.5%

2017-18

-3.6%

-4%

7,305,000

4.1%

-0.7%

1.7%

2018-19

-3.1%

-3.5%

7,404,000

6.1%

1.1%

3.9%

2019-20

-2.3%

-2.7%

7,502,000

8.5%

3.4%

4.6%

2020-21

-2.1%

-2.5%

7,581,000

9.8%

4.7%

7.3%

2021-22

2.2%

1.7%

7,613,000

15%

9.6%

4.1%

2022-23

6.4%

7,682,000

20.9%

15.3%

Read the whole report: School funding statistics, Financial Year 2021-22 – Explore education statistics – GOV.UK (explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk)

April 2022

LEADERSHIP BY EXAMPLE

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LEADERSHIP BY EXAMPLE

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ENTER UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS

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UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS AS A SERVICE: MAKING UC WORK FOR YOU Managing your transition away from PSTN/ISDN might seem

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April 2022 11

LEADERSHIP BY EXAMPLE

INTERVIEW

Connecting with the community

We speak to NEIL WILSON, assistant principal for personal development at Waterhead Academy, about how their community initiatives led to them being nominated for a Tes Award and why community is so central to the school’s ethos 12

April 2022

Tell us a little bit about your academy and your role. We’re an 11-to-16 academy based in the Waterhead area of Oldham, Greater Manchester, and we’re part of the South Pennines Academies Trust. The academy was established in 2010 - an amalgamation of two local schools; we now have approximately 1,350 students on roll. I’m the assistant principal for personal development. I oversee things like PSHE, extracurricular community initiatives loads of positive, nice things.

Why is community involvement so important to your academy? It’s important that our academy plays an integral role within the community, as this is really at the heart of the ethos of our school. It’s also important that our pupils take on the role of being active citizens, as well as thinking about their academic success. We’re here to educate young people about how to be positive active members of society who contribute to the local and wider communities. This enables our students to be role models, not

INTERVIEW

LEADERSHIP BY EXAMPLE

We always say to our young people, ‘Yeah, that’s fantastic...what’s going to make you stand out? What are those employers looking for?’ just within our school, but also within the community, and promotes the positivity that young people bring to their local communities. I think sometimes negative images are portrayed of young people in the press; we have some amazing students in our school - and in schools throughout the country - so it’s important we shine a spotlight on the excellent work they do, and the contributions they make to society. It also encourages students to understand the importance of community and how they can really affect, and make positive impacts within, their local communities and wider society. It also facilitates a range of opportunities for them to work collaboratively with one another and members of staff, and for wider a demographic across society - people they may not come into contact with such as elderly people, people in residential care homes and people in hospitals. Hopefully, when they go on to progress onto their next stages of education, or training and careers, they can talk about the experiences they’ve had here to help build a wider narrative around their CV. We always say to our young people, ‘Yeah, that’s fantastic. You’ve got these grade nines, you’ve got these excellent grades; what’s going to make you stand out? What are those employers looking for? What are those universities and colleges looking for, and

how can you demonstrate those factors?’ We begin this process right from Year 7 through to Year 11. We have a wide variety of community and leadership teams among the students, and everybody contributes to the whole school ethos. It generates a really positive atmosphere. Which community initiatives would you say you’re most proud of achieving? I’m really proud of everything we get involved in. I’m so lucky to be in a position where I can help to facilitate these opportunities among my colleagues and students - and it’s not a one-man-band, by any means; I’m just the person who tries and pulls things together. We have a huge buy-in from our staff and students, which is key. We’ve been involved in a range of initiatives. We support local food banks, homeless centres, the RSPCA and our local Oldham hospital - some of our students designed the entrance to the new Christie Cancer Unit there, and we also work with the neonatal team. We have an extracurricular group called Knitting for Neonates, where the students knit little hats and blankets. That’s something quite personal to me, as well, as it’s something that I’ve experienced and something, again, unique, which the students can do. We also work with a range of local residential care homes. Prior to COVID we had a group of students from all

year groups who visited; they would go and do a range of activities from knitting, to sewing, to board games - and even playing curling with the residents like they do at the Winter Olympics. Unfortunately, during lockdown, we weren’t able to visit, so the students wrote letters and sent presents so they still continued the communication. The students would say things like, ‘Sir, what can we do? We’re aware that some of these elderly residents might not have family, they might not be able to see them. How can we communicate with them?’ So we set-up a system of writing letters and worked towards that. Then, during the Christmas period, we arranged for a group of our carol singers to go and perform in the outside areas where the residents could watch through the windows. It’s very rewarding to see the smiles it brings to their faces; that’s the same feeling and reaction we get across a range of the initiatives we do. Listening to all the amazing things you’ve done it’s no surprise, really, that you were shortlisted for a Tes Award for Community and Collaboration. Tell us a bit more about that. I was really humbled when we were nominated, and it was a great opportunity for all the students and staff to be recognised for the amazing community work they’d all contributed to.

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LEADERSHIP BY EXAMPLE

The key word is ‘all’ - like with any school, you need the buy-in, not just from one or two people, you need to have the majority. That’s how we have managed to really drive it forward. The students are really keen; they discuss ideas with us about initiatives they want to do and then we discuss how we can implement them. Especially during the difficult period of the pandemic, I think it gave everyone a positive boost. How would you say that focusing more on the community has impacted the academy itself ? Right from the formation of the academy in 2010, we’ve had community front and centre of our ethos; we’ve just grown and evolved from day one. We’ve always encouraged our students to go out there and be active citizens - but we’ve got to provide those opportunities for them to be able to do that, and I’m really proud that we have done so. When our students grow and develop into young adults, they can carry on the work, which means the legacy will continue. So, if Neil Wilson moves on from Waterhead Academy, I’m 100% confident there’s a legacy in

April 2022

INTERVIEW

place that the school will continue to work with the community. As I said, we’ve grown it so that everybody’s involved, and the members of staff who come to work with us understand what we need from them - to really contribute and make a positive impact for our students, and the community as well. I think in society in general it’s important that we understand that we all play a role in promoting positivity and encouraging people to work together, regardless of age, gender, stereotypes, etc. Now, more than ever, I think it’s important to be proud of our backgrounds, proud of where we’re from, proud of our school, proud of our communities, and proud of the work we do as a school. What advice would you give to staff in other schools reading this who are thinking, ‘Wow, that’s something we’d really like to do, but we’re not sure where to start or how best to engage with our community?’ I think there’s a variety of ways. They can just Google the local residential care homes - they always welcome support,

Like with any school, you need the buy-in, not just from one or two people, you need to have the majority as do local hospitals; just literally drop them an email and get in touch. Another thing is sharing best practice among schools; we work collaboratively with a range of schools on a number of different areas. We all want the same thing; we all want the best for our children who attend our schools - so sharing good practice, seeing what’s out there and establishing those links with other schools is key. Also, within your teams you’ll have people who may have husbands, wives, relatives who work within certain professions - such as the care services, the NHS, emergency services - who

INTERVIEW

LEADERSHIP BY EXAMPLE

H I G H LY RECOMMENDED

may be able to put you in touch with someone in their sector. For example, we have students whose parents and carers work at the hospital, so we asked them, ‘What can we do to make a difference?’ We baked them some cakes and sent them some nice cards to thank them for what they do. It’s important to understand that ‘charity’ doesn’t have to be monetary; a thank you goes a long way. When do your students organise and do their community work? It is a range really; sometimes we do it during lunch, after school or, if we need to, some students and staff give up some weekends to volunteer. I think the school ethos has got to be there to understand the reasons why we are doing it and why it deserves our time. It is key that it’s valued alongside academic success – that, in order to develop a rounded citizen, it’s a balance between the two. What are your hopes for working with the community over the next few years? I want to continue to work with the partners we already have - to grow and

develop those links - and talk to them about how we can continue to support them during these difficult times. As we come out of the pandemic we will be thinking about how we can go back and visit the care homes and hospitals to carry on with our work. We’ll be talking to the students about the different things they want to support, and how we can facilitate that. Ultimately, we want to carry on building the legacy we’ve already established through all our staff and students. We want new students and staff to know, when they come to Waterhead Academy, that community is at the heart of our ethos. Our ethos is so strong because we understand the benefits, and why we do it. We do it because it’s the right thing to do, it’s our moral compass and, as human beings, it’s what we should be doing. It’s important to stay humble, to stay grounded, and to be positive with other people and support them in any way we can. I hope these our students – our changemakers - will become the next generation of leaders to carry on community work and developing strong communities.

Joanne Rudd, court manager, Violet Hill Court Retirement Living: “Working and building relationships with the pupils and staff from Waterhead Academy has been a pleasure. Seeing residents sharing memories and stories with the pupils and the pupils listening and asking questions and sharing their stories, has benefited both the residents and pupils.”

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Manchester - 5th May 2022 London - 9th June 2022

SEMINARS FOR SUPERHEROES We know being an SBL can often feel like being a superhero. Juggling multiple tasks and often saving the day. To support you in your challenging and varied role we have sessions on #notbroken, being 10% braver, finance, estate management, health and GET safety, management of TICKETS NOW school support functions, Book or email us for sustainability, marketing, limited free promotional ICT and much more! delegate places hello@ edexeclive.co.uk

COGNITIVE BIAS

DR FIONA AUBREY-SMITH, director of One Life Learning, explains how your cognitive bias could be affecting your decision-making

e are seeing a wonderful shift as education becomes an increasingly evidence-informed profession. Thanks to research and resources such as the Education Endowment Foundation’s Teaching and Learning Toolkit and Professor John Hattie’s Visible Learning Meta X, we are more informed than ever before about what works and what does not. However, how often have you spent hours searching for solutions to problems that your school faces – and countless meetings and days working

LEADERSHIP BY EXAMPLE

How to be aware of cognitive bias in your school decisionmaking processes on something – only to find it has not led to the impact that you had hoped for? Despite access to robust and comprehensive evidence sources, we are still seeing inefficiencies within our decision-making. So why is this? It is all about cognitive bias. In other words – what is going on inside our own heads affecting how we look at the world around us. All of us look at the world through a specific lens which changes depending on the context we are in and who else is involved. As an example, let’s take something called ‘anecdotal

fallacy’ – which is the tendency to take anecdotal information (e.g., other schools recommending a strategy or resource) at face value and give it the same status as more rigorous data when making judgements about effectiveness. We have all experienced this – hearing how successful something was across our cluster, federation, trust or local authority. We do not want to be the one not adopting something that clearly sounds like it works, so we buy-in and start doing it in our own school. However, this misses the important step of asking why it worked elsewhere

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LEADERSHIP BY EXAMPLE

- or could this be like a runaway train, with other schools adopting it and not wanting to be seen as the one school where it did not work? Are the schools where the strategy worked similar enough to our own school to make a justifiable comparison about its likely impact? Most importantly, what does the evidence – impartial, objective, robust, longitudinal evidence – say? Cognitive bias is an emerging field within education and an absolutely vital one to understand if we are to have greater impact - both as individual professionals and also through our collective efficacy – working together to have greater positive impact on children’s learning.

Cognitive bias is an emerging field within education and an absolutely vital one to understand

GET STARTED So here is an easy (and hopefully entertaining!) way to get started. Sit with your colleagues and talk through the types of bias in the list below. These are adapted from Hattie and Hamilton (2019) As good as gold? Why we focus on the wrong drivers in education and are provided here for you with practical illustrations and examples to help you to see which of these might be featuring in decision-making at your school. Be honest with each other and share examples where you think this has

April 2022

COGNITIVE BIAS

happened within your own school – perhaps collectively, perhaps individually, perhaps with specific colleagues. Authority bias: the tendency to attribute greater weight and accuracy to the opinions of an authority or well-known figure – irrespective of whether this is deserved – and to be influenced by it. For example, how many conference presenters or Twitter folk have you requoted without checking the accuracy of their claims? In order to tackle this, try not to be swayed by famous, titled gurus. Carefully unpack and test all of their assumptions - especially if they are making claims outside their specific area of expertise. Confirmation bias: the tendency to collect and interpret information in a way that conforms with, rather than opposes, our existing beliefs. For example, how much of your monitoring confirms your existing predictions rather than viewing them objectively and critically? In order to tackle this, be prepared to go against the grain, and to question sacred assumptions. Remember, we tend to select education approaches, products and services that accord with our world view, and we will often continue to believe in them even when convincing evidence is presented that our world view may be distorted. Ostrich effect: the tendency to avoid monitoring information that might give psychological discomfort. What is

currently on your radar that you have been avoiding having to address? In order to tackle this, collect robust and regular data from a range of sources about the implementation of new interventions and analyse this data ruthlessly – involve colleagues who have contrasting opinions to your own. Anecdotal fallacy: the tendency to take anecdotal information - such as other schools recommending a strategy or resource - at face value and give it the same status as more rigorous data in making judgements about effectiveness. In order to tackle this, probe deeply into why strategies, resources or products worked – where is the evidence, and is that evidence robust, impartial and objective? Halo effect: the tendency to generalise from limited experiences about an individual person, company or product – assuming everything they do/offer

COGNITIVE BIAS

ownership when we are involved in the creation or adaptation of something; channel this energy into personalising solutions which evidence shows works.

is just as good. In order to tackle this, remember that everyone has strengths and weaknesses. An expert in one area will not be expert in everything. For each area, search critically for what the evidence shows works with greatest impact. But our school is different: the tendency to avoid using a tried and tested solution which evidence shows works because it was used or created elsewhere, claiming ‘but we are different here...’ In order to tackle this, remember that we have more in common than that which divides us. Do not reinvent the wheel – adapt or adopt what evidence shows works so that it then also works for your school. The ‘IKEA effect’: the tendency to have greater buy-in to a solution where the end-user is directly involved in building or localising the strategy, product or service. In order to tackle this, remember that we all feel greater

Jumping on the bandwagon: the tendency to believe that something is good because a large number of other people believe it is good. In order to tackle this, simply remember that it might work or it might not. Ask those on the bandwagon to point you to robust evidence, and always check; what does the evidence actually say? Cherry-picking: the tendency to remember or overemphasise pockets of positive or negative data within larger sets of more random data (i.e. seeing phantom patterns). Why are you subconsciously doing that? To tackle this, look at trends over time, or trends across groups of children/schools. Do you have access to the whole dataset and does the rest of the data broadly agree with or support these trends? Courtesy bias: the tendency to give an opinion that is more socially palatable than our true beliefs (are you contributing to an echo chamber in your own school?) In order to tackle this, remember that human beings are never objective; we all look at things differently. Embrace this truth and use it as a way to open discussion, debate and robust conversation about what the evidence really says to all those involved.

LEADERSHIP BY EXAMPLE

Law of the instrument: - the tendency to only address problems for which you already have a potential solution. (Remember - if you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.) In order to tackle this, identify the problems that need to be solved, then search for solutions, rather than searching for problems to which you already have a solution. Easy task blinkers: the tendency to avoid complex projects, focusing instead on projects that are simple and easy to grasp by a majority of people. In order to tackle this divert the time and energy spent on all those little projects and focus this all on fewer, bigger, more impactful, projects. Go for quality strategies, not quantity of actions. Sunken cost fallacy: the tendency to continue with a project that is not bearing fruit, simply because so much has been invested in it already. In order to tackle this, for any investment – of time or money – ensure early milestones offer genuine review points that include the option to stop. Even if money has been committed, future time has not been – and this can be redirected somewhere else more impactful. Once you have had a chance to do this reflect on the suggestions about how you might reduce or avoid such bias in the future. It’s important to be really honest with yourself, however uncomfortable this might be at first. Only by recognising these biases, and addressing them, will we break free of the limitations they place on our professional practice - and on the impact we could have on our children’s learning.

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LEADERSHIP BY EXAMPLE

CONTRACT GOOD PRACTICE

April 2022

CONTRACT GOOD PRACTICE

LEADERSHIP BY EXAMPLE

elsewhere, rather than producing a renewal price and service based on what they delivered last year, at last year’s price plus inflation. ENCOURAGING THE SUPPLIER TO WORK TO RETAIN YOUR BUSINESS Knowing that they are going to have to convince you to sign up again means suppliers are more likely to deliver the current contract well and, when the renewal comes around, they know they have to be competitive with others, because you may also have quotes for comparison. My letter does not say this is a one-time deal and then we part ways; it says that, at the point of renewal, we would be delighted to discuss options - but the default position is that the contract will end. Good suppliers are not threatened by the need to compete but use competition as part of their process of continually improving products and services for their customers. If a competitor offers something that customers’ value, they too want to satisfy the customers with similar new features and attractive pricing.

Good suppliers are not threatened by the need to compete

PREVENTING ACCIDENTAL AUTO-RENEWALS There is no risk of you missing the notice deadline because you have already given notice. The deadline is the minimum notice period; contracts do not specify a maximum notice period, so you are quite at liberty to give notice on day one. This also means you will only renew if there remains a genuine need for the contract. SHIFTING THE ONUS TO REMEMBER THE CONTRACT RENEWAL DATE FROM YOURSELF TO THE SUPPLIER The supplier will usually be in touch well in advance of the relevant date to discuss the offer they have for you if you enter a new contract; sales teams sharpen their pencils if they believe you might genuinely go

Neither is this about being transactional - quite the opposite. It is about ensuring the supplier maintains good relationships, understands our needs as a client and that we work together to inform and shape their service. When renewal comes around, if we have all done our work properly, they should have the advantage because the relationships built and knowledge gained enable them to be more competitive. So, while you are enjoying the satisfaction of having secured that brilliantly negotiated, amazing, new contract, it might be worth considering letting the supplier know that when it comes up for renewal they will need to impress you again. So, my suggestion here is that you cancel at the same time as signing; it is amazing how quickly you move onto the next thing and forget to do it!

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LEADERSHIP BY EXAMPLE

EDEXEC LIVE 2022

2022:

Meet the speakers! Meet our stellar line-up of speakers who are ready to help you skill-up - providing practical advice that will really make a difference to you and your school

ere are the expert speakers joining us at EdExec LIVE North on Thursday 5 May and EdExec LIVE South on Thursday 9 June.

Laura Williams KEYNOTE: School Business Leadership Podcast LIVE! Laura Williams, friend of EdExec and host of the School Business Leadership Podcast, will be recording very special live versions of her podcast at both the Manchester and London events. Joined by a panel of SBLs, she will host a live Q&A, answering all of your burning SBL questions! Submit a question for the panel by emailing hello@edexeclive.co.uk using the subject line ‘I want to ask my fellow SBLs a question!’ Husham Khan - Financial intelligence for school business leaders The education landscape continues to change rapidly

April 2022

- as a result, the skills required by SBLs are changing too. In this seminar Husham will explore the new financial concepts now required by many schools and trusts to enable more informed and effective decision-making. Jonny Coates Effective school estate management Over the last few years good estate management in schools has been pushed up the DfE agenda, and the parameters change on a regular basis. Jonny will be asking how high estate management features in the budget and operational priorities in your setting, how you plan strategically for the unforeseen circumstances that inevitably arise in all schools, and whether you maximise the school calendar and time available for projects. He will cover the different techniques and approaches he has found successful, sharing experiences from his work in both MATs and maintained schools.

EDEXEC LIVE 2022

Shirley Si Ahmed - Leading support functions to drive school improvement Sometimes school administration, premises and lunchtime staff are an afterthought to the core purpose of teaching and learning. However, effective leadership of school support functions can also have a measurable impact on outcomes for children and young people. By embracing leadership and management theory when working with support functions we can drive staff development and formulate business cases for investment in these areas – and we can transform practice, and what happens in schools, all linked to supporting the delivery of quality first teaching. Phil Burton - Achieving excellence in health and safety Although they may not be the most glamorous parts of the role, health, safety and compliance play an important part in the day-to-day tasks of a business manager. Come and join Phil Burton who will make you feel excited (yes, really!) about going back to school and implementing the health and safety practices you learn about in his seminar. Find out how Phil’s school won the national Excellence in Health and Safety Award as he explains how he brought in ideas and processes from outside the education sector which supported and enhanced the school’s procedures. You’ll go away with lots of hints and tips which will enable you to transform the way you ‘do’ health and safety in your school. Micon Metcalfe - The role of the SBP in a changing educational landscape The changes to the educational landscape in the past decade have seen the role of the school business professional change - change represents

LEADERSHIP BY EXAMPLE

opportunity and this session will explore both the generalist and specialist career routes open to SBPs and the need for generalist business support at school or multi academy trust level. Tracey Gray - Absence Management – Return to Work Planning Whether you are new to business leadership or a seasoned professional, you are likely to have come across staff absence. Often, it falls to the business leader to have a significant role in staff absence management. Surely this should therefore be a straightforward process – with clear policies set out and good support in place? In my experience, it can often be anything but. We can find ourselves managing complex, highly emotive situations which do not have a ‘one size fits all’ formula for reintegration back into work. However, there are ways in which we can develop our skills to enable us to successfully achieve a return to work for most staff. The additional speakers joining us at EdExec LIVE North on Thursday 5 May. Sally Boaden - A journey of support for SBLs The impact of COVID, along with the daily challenges of being a school business leader (in whatever guise this maybe), has led to many SBLs leaving the education sector. Funding cuts, changes to revenue streams, ever-changing legislation and bureaucratic imposition are just a few of the stressors we have had to battle over the past two years. Out of the struggle a movement was born. #NotBroken came about one Friday morning in Sally’s makeshift study to support those that were on the brink of handing in their notice. The journey from #NotBroken to SBL Support Hub has been immense; Sally will walk us through how this looked, how it is today, and what you can expect in the future.

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LEADERSHIP BY EXAMPLE

EDEXEC LIVE 2022

Nigel Milligan - How to get more from your IT support in school Many schools do not feel they get value from their IT support provision. Nigel believes there are some educational IT support services which focus on up-selling products rather than delivering the proactive IT support and development programme that school staff and pupils deserve to receive. Simon Hepburn - The business case for school marketing In this seminar Simon Hepburn will explore what ‘marketing’ really is – and why it starts with listening, not spending. He’ll explain how to engage your whole community behind a consistent purpose and goal, and how to use the resources you have – including students and buildings – to save money! Neil Limbrick - The SBM guide to IT strategy Schools and MATs invest a lot of time and money into IT resources, including devices, software and licenses. Yet few SBMs feel their organisations have a robust strategy for the development and sustainable use of IT. In this thought-provoking workshop, Neil will help you understand how to assess your IT provision, and how to focus on the areas that matter and will have the biggest impact in your school. Andrew Mackrell and Stephen BlackbeardRapley How to Successfully Implement Software in Schools and Trusts Covid-19 was arguably the catalyst to digitally transform the education sector. The list of digital systems in play in schools and trusts up and down the country is vast, and it’s only going to grow. Momentum towards adopting software to streamline processes, unlock efficiencies, and improve workflows is gaining pace. Yet, while the systems

April 2022

themselves are all-singing, all-dancing by nature, unless they are implemented correctly and with comprehensive considerations, the scope for real, genuine benefit is minimal. The additional speakers joining us at EdExec LIVE South Thursday 9 June. Cheryl Campbell Developing an anti-racism HR strategy in schools Many schools are examining their workforce through a diversity lens and thinking about how to effect change. Rather than making knee-jerk, possibly token, appointments this seminar will look at how to develop a strategy that really meets the needs of your setting. Vivienne Porritt OBE - Being 10% braver to disrupt the status quo for SBLs The status quo in education means that many school business leaders are not members of the senior leadership team or COOs in trusts. Your pay is not commensurate with what you are worth and you may not be seen as school leaders. Vivienne Porritt and WomenEd want to help us to disrupt this.

EDEXEC LIVE 2022

LEADERSHIP BY EXAMPLE

Dr Pooky Knightsmith - Supporting student mental health The past couple of years has pushed student mental health ever higher on our agendas. With the COVID pandemic bringing with it a shadow pandemic of mental ill health at a time when access to stretched specialist services is reduced, it can be hard for school staff to know what to do, or where to turn. This session will offer a combination of taught content and discussion, and will draw equally on the current evidence base, clinical best practice and what is working well in schools right now. Gary Henderson – Preventing attacks: is your cyber security up to scratch? Schools and colleges are increasingly faced with cyber attacks and cyber incidents; this mirrors the global trend of increasing levels of cyber threats and comes at a time when the pandemic has driven more and better use of technology in schools. So, what can schools, school leaders and their IT staff do to be prepared? Justin Smith - The business case for school marketing Do you want to work in a full school with engaged parents, strong community links and a strong income flow? Justin will explain the ‘marketing’ process and share examples of schools that have taken a formal, strategic, approach and achieved these goals – without spending vast amounts on advertising! Helen Burge - Creating a culture of sustainability in school Helen Burge, deputy chief operations officer at The Priory Learning Trust, discusses how to get started on creating a greener school. How can your school or trust make adaptations in order to be greener? How can the SBL play a strategic role in championing the green agenda and encouraging other stakeholders to get involved?

April 2022 25

PROCUREMENT

WRITING A SPEC

How to write a tender specification ANDREW BLENCH, SBM consultant at School Business Partner, gives his advice on how to write a tender specification, and when you need one

rocurement can be a significant part of the school business manager’s job role and is often seen as something of a mysterious science. The ISBL professional standards define it as ‘Procure goods and services on a valuefor-money basis (economy, efficiency and effectiveness) to support education delivery within the context of regulatory frameworks and legislation’. So, what is a tender specification and when would you need one? ‘A tender specification means the data, drawings, schedules and other technical details furnished with the tender document and subsequent clarifications, if any, furnished by the employer for the purpose of submitting the offer by the tenderer’ It would be possible to write a tender specification for almost any type or value of purchase but, in practice, the higher the value of the contract for

April 2022

service or goods you are buying, the more likely it is that you will want to have one. Your school or trust finance/ procurement policy should clearly specify at which values you need to go out to market for quotations and at what value you might need to go out to market using a formal tender process. Typically, the process you need to use will be related to the total value of the goods or services being bought. L ow value: generally defined as up to £10,000. M edium value: generally defined as £10,001 to £39,999. H igh value: generally defined as £40,000 or above.  I f what you are buying is £213,477 or higher you will, typically, have to run a Public Contracts Regulations Compliant process. See Find the right way to buy - Buying procedures and procurement law for schools Guidance - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

What’s included in a tender specification?

A PRECISE DESCRIPTION OF WHAT IT IS YOU NEED This might seem like stating the ‘blooming obvious’ but I guess that’s the point; what seems really obvious to those of us working inside schools is not necessarily obvious to external suppliers - like the time a SBM ordered two sets of new classroom chairs to be delivered to a high school only to find, to his horror, that what had been delivered were two sets of classroom chairs for nursery age children. User error on the SBM’s part in entering digits in the wrong order - but surely the supplier knew we were a high school? It should have been obvious shouldn’t it? Why didn’t the supplier question the order? Because they don’t know your context or needs. This isn’t something you can or should do in isolation. Think; who are

WRITING A SPEC

the end-users? Who are the stakeholders I need to consult? Staff, pupils, parents, governors? The broader range of people you consult, the more detailed and accurate a description of your needs you will arrive at for your specification. Also consider whether someone might already have done this work for you. Are there technical specifications which potential suppliers need to meet in order to comply with statutory regulations, or industry standards, for example. I found the Association for Teaching PE Home - Association for Physical Education Association For Physical Education | P.E. (afpe.org.uk) great source of advice when looking at purchasing PE kit/equipment. CLEAPPS is also a great source of advice when buying kit for the teaching of science. Have a look at CLEAPSS Buy It Guides.

AN EXPLANATION OF WHAT IT SHOULD DO This is about specifics, and also purpose and output. It can be quite easy to describe a piece of equipment, or service we need, in technical terms but ask yourself what the intended outcome or impact are from this purchase. This provides a sense-check for suppliers as well. It prompts them to think ‘Will this XX actually give them what they think it will?’

THE AMOUNT YOU NEED In most cases this is quite specific but if you are genuinely in a situation where you could, perhaps, use more of something, or have storage capacity, then think about how you express this. There will be a minimum

requirement, but if you would consider more, then say so. This is often where value for money can be achieved.

WHAT QUALITY IT SHOULD BE Would second hand/reconditioned equipment be just as acceptable? If reconditioned, what warranty would you want with it? Be wary of aesthetics. The look of things can be very enticing but design over form function can be very expensive. Does something that no-one except the business manager is ever going to see need to look good?

WHEN YOU NEED IT Most contractors who work with schools know that school life has its own rhythm built around the school day, term times and holidays. They should also understand that goods and services need to be delivered in such a way as to minimise contact between contractors, employees and children that safeguarding is paramount. But we mustn’t take this for granted. A good tender specification for a school will contain detail around completion or delivery dates, hours of operation (if it’s a service), and any restrictions in terms of how the contract can work. If you don’t specify these aspects you will receive inaccurate tender bids.

THE PRICE When tendering for a service contract this will be the total value of the contract over the whole contract length; for example, if a service costs £20,000 a year and runs for a three-year contract period the service

PROCUREMENT

value/price is £60,000. Be clear in your tender specification as to how you want the price to be detailed. Do you want different elements of the service or goods listed separately? Do you want to be given costs for different levels of service e.g., bronze, silver, gold? Don’t forget to ask about warranties and guarantees. Are these included? Also think of the running costs such as utilities, servicing. If looking at equipment, what happens when the kit reaches the end of its useful life?

CONSIDER ADDED VALUE Whilst this isn’t mandatory, you might want to give the tenderer the opportunity to write about any added value they could bring with the purchase. For example, when tendering for a catering service the principal consideration is the food and quality of service - but might the tenderer also offer other aspects? Food technology curriculum materials? Free loan of their staff to teach, or work with parents?

GETTING HELP Sometimes the scale and value of the goods or services we are tendering for is so complex that we will need external help. There are many good external consultancy companies which can help with this and, very often, their fees will be recouped through savings made in the tendering process and contract value. The DfE have just launched a tender writing service. It’s in its infancy and, at the moment, only covers catering and multifunction devices. See Create a specification to procure for your school (get-helpbuying-for-schools.service.gov.uk) 

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FINANCE

TA C K L I N G F I N A N C E

n a c n ial f i F or

HUSHAM KHAN, school business leader and author, analyses the financial difficulties schools are facing and gives advice on how you can best prepare to tackle them

April 2022

world tain er

n i g an u n i t s n a c c e

TA C K L I N G F I N A N C E

FINANCE

I have never seen a time where recruitment has been such a challenge, with the candidate pool so depleted year for the maintained sector, and the new streamlined BFR return, long term forecasting has never been so important, not only from a business perspective but also in how it drives pedagogy and wellbeing. Currently the three big uncertainties are energy, other supplies and recruitment; unfortunately, the markets for all of these areas are extremely volatile at the moment, with energy contracts procured by some councils across the UK spiking by over 200% - and that’s before you factor in the potential further impact of economic sanctions. If the domestic market is anything to go by, we could see schools paying up to five times more than their previous standard tariff rate, excluding fixed term. Those currently on fixed term energy contracts could easily see nasty shocks to budgets in a couple of years, or when those contracts expire. My advice would be to lock in early once those fixed rate deals become available. There could be a silver lining in all of this, however, as it may accelerate the sustainability agenda and increase the number of organisations aiming for carbon neutrality. Only time will tell. CATERING FOR CUTS Another area which may see a potential shock is catering contracts. With the new preferred measure of inflation, the Consumer Prices Index with Housing, we could see double digit figures of inflation by this time next year - although a more realistic certainty would be nearer to eight per cent. Bring in potential pay inflation of three per cent, the cost of food increasing by 18% minimum, and the rocketing price of energy, we have a perfect storm! Whilst the impact can be mitigated

(to a degree) by school meal income there will need to be a re-balancing in catering contracts to ensure affordability by the school, deliverability to the pupils and affordability from parents. Free school meal funding will, sadly, not keep up with the inflationary pressures in the short term. I have never seen a time where recruitment has been such a challenge, with the candidate pool so depleted. This is leading to greater unit supply costs, and I am sure the re-introduction of golden hellos in order to attract staff will become more and more common. It’s a good thing for those seeking employment - but not so positive if your budget is being stretched more than you had planned. For this reason, any supply staff vacancies should include an uplift which has been agreed with your supply agency. As recently as this term I have seen costs for teaching supply staff increase by up to 50%. Just as big a threat is the overall reduction in pupil numbers within the early years and primary sectors over the next five years. We could be seeing a drop of as much as eight per cent in this area due to the decline in birth rates - and that is without factoring in the impact COVID has had on birth rates, which could be as high as 20% if we follow similar trends to those in mainland Europe. Last year, when the chancellor of the exchequer Rishi Sunak mentioned that the financial emergency was about to begin, I took it with a pinch of salt. I am now realising that this is turning out to be more than an emergency and will push the skills of schools business leaders to the limit. It is a challenge the sector will rise to again as this is who we are, and what we do! 

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MANAGEMENT

ECO SCHOOLS AWARD

How to exterminate school litter bugs In the second article of the series which focuses on how to address each area of the Eco Schools Award, Helen Burge, deputy COO at The Priory Learning Trust, discusses the issue of litter and why the Wombles were the original eco-warriors!

April 2022

ustainability is not just the SBM’s responsibility; as you read this, consider who you could delegate the actions to, or work with. My parents are trying to declutter their house and recently uncovered the 1974 Remember You’re a Womble album - much to the delight of my brothers and I. Technically, the album should belong to my older brother, as he was the only one alive in 1974, but it created a wave of nostalgia for me and my little brother too - we used to have cats called Tomsk and Cholet! For those who don’t know, the fictional Wombles, including Tomsk and Cholet, lived under Wimbledon Common and used to make good use of the things that they found, things that the everyday folks left behind – how very ahead of the ‘waste hierarchy’, which was introduced in 2011. The original green eco-warriors! So why this nostalgic flashback? Well, I think the Wombles and litter are just linked in my head due to the warm associations made in my childhood. We need to encourage strong behavioural messages in our pupils to help them learn the importance of ‘bin it’ rather than ‘drop it’. Unfortunately, I’m sure you can all think of a time in the

ECO SCHOOLS AWARD

staff room when certain colleagues haven’t disposed of their breaktime snack wrappers or apple cores, and left them on the side for someone else to deal with. There might have been a valid reason, but you will also recall the indignation you felt upon discovering the litter. SWEEP THE SHEDS You may have read James Kerr’s Legacy, in which he analyses the culture of the All Blacks rugby team, and lists their 15 mantras which includes ‘Sweep the sheds’ which is further explained as, ‘Never be too big to do the small things that need to be done’ - and so they tidy up their changing room, aka ‘shed’, after training and games. This humility, taking responsibility for their own actions, and not having a sense of entitlement, is what we are really talking about when we are trying to prevent people from littering. This mantra could be introduced by teachers to pupils at the end of a lesson or school day, and for staff at the end of a staff meeting, lunchtime and definitely for the end of term. Jeepers, my blood would boil when I would discover mugs of mould in classrooms, just because a member of staff hadn’t ‘swept the shed’ before leaving for their six week break! This reminds me of the story of four people named Everybody, Somebody, Anybody and Nobody: There was an important job to be done and Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it. Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it. Somebody got angry about that, because it was Everybody’s job. Everybody thought Anybody could do it, but

MANAGEMENT

Nobody realised that Everybody wouldn’t do it. It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody did what Anybody could have. It really is the whole school community’s responsibility to prevent litter in order to protect the school environment, discourage pests (including rats and seagulls) and create a nice working environment for all – inside or outside. In our secondary

Never be too big to do the small things that need to be done schools our lunchtime supervisors and leadership team walk around with litter pickers so they can catch a stray piece of litter throughout the day and they remind students to use the covered bins. We’re a coastal MAT so the seagulls are frequent visitors to site; we try very hard to discourage them, but their body clocks must be tuned into our breaktimes! Our site teams keep on top of emptying the litter and recycling bins to avoid persistent seagull attention. They also litter pick the approaches to school. One school has a McDonalds opposite it! McDonalds are a business partner of the Keep Britain Tidy charity which was formed following a 1954 Women’s Institute resolution to ‘Keep Britain Tidy’. This led to the creation of Eco Schools in 1994, and loads of other spin off initiatives and campaigns. So, whether you ‘remember you’re a Womble’ or your channel your inner All Black rugby player in order to achieve this, may your school be litter free – inside and out. 

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I C T M AT T E R S

STREAMLINING IT

Streamlining IT for the next generation of edtech GARETH HARLE, ANME member with 17 years’ experience as an IT manager in education, explains why sometimes less is more when it comes to edtech

April 2022

STREAMLINING IT

some/an alarming number struggle to understand the concept of logging into a laptop, using office productivity tools and accessing their online courses. It feels like we’ve lost sight of the purpose of our technology. We’ve spent the last 10 years putting system after system in place, confusing our users and making a headache for our support teams. Maybe now is the time to scale it back. REDUCE YOUR PLATFORMS I’ve just finished a four-year term as IT manager for a mid-sized FE college in North Lincolnshire. When I look back over my time at the college I’m reminded that our most significant achievements were the things we removed. I think about all the things we had implemented in previous roles, such as an online booking room system, online seating plans, a parent portal, a VLE and an online student reward system – but, over the last four years, we have reduced our online learning platforms from three to one, pushing as much data to this new, single, platform as possible. We wanted to ensure that teaching staff and students only needed two systems open to get 99% of their work done. Our teachers use the learning platform in one tab and the web-based MIS system in another, and the systems are the same for our students. Our chosen learning platform is set up to record videos of all lessons, enabling students to watch them again, out of hours, helping to support any catch-up work. Our data systems are managed through shared spreadsheets, unless held directly in our MIS, and our user accounts synchronise between systems

I C T M AT T E R S

so one login allows our users into both systems. Because our two main platforms are both web-based we can quickly switch to remote working or a hybrid model as the world dictates. DEVELOP A HOLISTIC STRATEGY This may come across as overly simplistic; we do, of course, have other applications and platforms that some staff use. For example, our finance team always needs a finance package, and our computing department has specialist software installed for their courses. The point here is to simplify the core systems that everyone needs - systems that span the entire breadth of the organisation and make it run; systems that allow people to communicate, collaborate and educate. I must emphasise that the point isn’t to remove things of value - it’s to develop a holistic strategy that enables leaders to ask, ‘Why do we need this system?’ or ‘Can we do this with tools we already have?’ The same two systems I’ve talked about are used to engage students right from the application stage all the way through to getting their exam results. The focus on these two core platforms has meant that we can better secure, update and develop them. We can choose hardware specifically designed for them to create a more seamless user experience. We can genuinely get technology out of the way and simplify our systems so our teachers can focus on teaching, our support teams can provide quality support, and our learners can learn. We can be free to innovate - and that is the future of edtech.

The point isn’t to remove things of value it’s to develop a holistic strategy

April 2022 33

I C T M AT T E R S

TECHNO GEEK

Techno Geek

Achieving proactive education IT support NIGEL MILLIGAN, IT technician manager at St Herbert’s RC Primary School, discusses the issues around IT support providers and building the confidence schools have in the use of IT

s I was entering the last stages of my degree see the eye-rolling and hear comments against support I had to choose a topic for my dissertation. technicians who are only doing the best they can under There were many different subjects that I the circumstances. The real issues lie with the support considered but, in the end, my wife quickly providers who do not focus on the school’s needs; they helped me decide on a serious topic that was drastically only care about up-selling products which create more fires affecting her as a deputy headteacher in a primary that need to be extinguished. I could name and shame a school. The year was 2007, and the IT support in school few educational IT support companies which are still, to this wasn’t helping them at all; school leaders knew there day, only interested in schools which spend more money must be a better way of doing things to help teachers with them rather than providing a more personalised embrace the use of technology. service to support people before product. In the end my dissertation concluded that the only way There are so many schools which don’t have the that teachers would embrace the use of technology was if confidence to break free from this way of working. There they felt confident that it would work every time they came needs to be more transparent advice given to all schools to use it. This sounds like a no-brainer to to help them select a fairer support most of us, but it’s terrible to discover that, system. I am actually writing this even in 2022, there are school staff who article today following a meeting I Even in 2022, do not feel confident that technology will had with a very enthusiastic IT support work successfully each and every time they engineer who has recently left one of there are school need to do something. the education support companies I staff who do not From the moment I started my role referred to earlier. The general feeling working in IT support at the school I carried feel confident that of schools being treated unfairly, and out the dissertation exercise. I quickly the positive input from technicians technology will realised I had a different approach to IT not being taken seriously by these work successfully support, and the wider world of issues, companies, underlines an immoral than most of those around me. I started to practice that has to stop. talk to other schools at IT meetings and the I would be interested to receive feedback was always the same response feedback from as many schools as of, ‘We haven’t got someone like you who can help us’. possible about how effective their IT support is. My mission The general feeling still is that IT technical support in is to help IT support gain a better reputation, and for all schools isn’t effective and is more of a firefighting scenario school staff become more confident in using technology to rather than a proactive solution. It’s an awful experience to enhance teaching and learning for their students.

April 2022

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I C T M AT T E R S

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April 2022 35

I C T M AT T E R S

ESPORTS IN SCHOOLS

Introducing esports in schools GARY HENDERSON, ANME ambassador and director of IT at Millfield School, explains his passion for esports and why he believes more schools should get involved with it

have long been a fan of esports, or competitive computer gaming. As an FE teacher, I oversaw the introduction of Xboxes and then PC-based competitions within a college back in the early 2000s, when Halo was the main game of choice. When I returned to secondary teaching, around 2006, I had a PlayStation in my desk drawer attached to the projector, and oversaw the set up of a number of PC real-time strategy games like Age of Empires, to support competitive matches internally within the school. More recently I have been involved in Millfield joining the

April 2022

British Esports Association’s interschool/college Champs tournament, and arranging a smaller inter-schools’ tournament, trying to encourage more cross-school competition. Overall, I am very positive about the potential of esports and its benefits within schools and colleges - but why? ESPORTS ISN’T GAMING The first thing to note is that esports and gaming are, in my eyes, two different things. Gaming is a leisure activity, something done purely for enjoyment, whereas esports is competitive. At first

glance this might not seem like a sufficient distinction as most online games involve competition with others, so all gaming might be considered competitive. However, let’s consider football; I can play football with a group of friends, against others for leisure, or I can play competitively as part of a league, cup or other tournaments; it can include training, coaching, discussions of strategy and efforts to continually improve. For me, esports is that level of competition which involves the training, the preparation, the in-game strategy and the post-game analysis and future planning.

ESPORTS IN SCHOOLS

ESPORTS IN SCHOOLS: SKILLS DEVELOPMENT It is this rounded cycle of pre-match, during-match, and post-match, leading into the next match, which I see as being one of the big benefits of esports in schools. It encourages students to develop their skills in relation to communication, during the match, and also in terms of pre and post, where they might need to discuss others’ strengths and weaknesses, differing opinions and views on tactics and other topics which might be difficult to discuss and require a greater degree of emotional intelligence.

Esports can, I believe, help the development of emotional intelligence in students As such esports can, I believe, help the development of emotional intelligence in students. Additionally, within the game things are often fast and frantic, requiring cool and clear communication under pressure - another skill which is increasingly important in the busy, and only getting busier, world we now live in. There is also the development of skills around planning, tactics and strategy, again, increasingly important in a world where more repetitive and simple tasks and jobs are being automated, meaning job market entrants tend to need higherorder skills and experience. ESPORTS IS BIG BUSINESS We need to acknowledge the increasing size of the esports industry which, therefore, represents growing

opportunities for our students as they are prepared with the appropriate knowledge, skills and experience. In 2021 the games market generated around $180bn of revenue - which makes for a very sizeable industry. On this basis, it only makes sense for schools to have some esports provision in place to prepare those students who might be interested in the existing and new esports opportunities which will exist when they come to leave school or college. HOW TO GET STARTED If you aren’t involved in esports currently I would certainly recommend it, and getting involved doesn’t need to be difficult. It is easy to start small and dip your toe in before then developing the provision within your school. Like me, you might start initially with esports competitions internally, within your school. This needn’t require much more than a gaming console to get started plus a little bit of time and effort in sorting out the logistics in relation to registering students - a simple MS or Google form can help with this - then sorting out matches, and maybe some prizes, for a little tournament. As things progress you might decide to invest in some gaming PCs – don’t worry, this needn’t cost the earth. When I progressed to this stage I aligned it with normal PC replacement cycles within the school and just increased the specification of some of the computers to include dedicated graphics cards. Once at this stage you might then consider inter-schools’ competition; I would definitely recommend the British Esports Student Champs tournament,

I C T M AT T E R S

which is well-established and easy to get involved in. The key for me is that the extent and size of the provision are for schools to decide. Small schools might want to keep it simple, with small internal tournaments, whereas larger colleges, where esports might be taught as a BTEC, might have fully-functional gaming suites, with the potential for live streaming and live audiences, along with video commentary facilities. It is, therefore, easy to get started, and easy to scale-up, as appropriate. SAFEGUARDING One of the other considerations often raised with me is that of safeguarding while online gaming. For me, having esports provision enables this to be discussed with students. We need to acknowledge that students are playing games online with or without our input; therefore, setting up an opportunity to discuss the issues, through esports, is only going to have a positive impact. Where students get it wrong in an esports session - as some may do the fact that students are supervised allows for this to be used as a learning opportunity, to discuss what went wrong, why it went wrong and how this might be avoided in future. Students are very much interested in gaming and there will be many who would like to explore esports opportunities. Esports is a massive and growing industry, and there will probably be new opportunities which our current students could take advantage of, especially with the skill-development benefits in relation to teamwork, communication, collaboration, etc., which involvement in esports can bring.I believe adding esports provision is an easy win for schools and I look forward to seeing increasing numbers of schools getting involved.

April 2022 37

LIVE IT

TEABREAK

LIVE IT

Time to take a few moments out for some light and interesting reading – a wellearned break from numbers and statistics!

DID YOU KNOW?

Caption competition Let us know your funny caption ideas by tweeting us @edexec

In 2004, on the island of Flores in Indonesia, a team of Australian and Indonesian researchers discovered the remains of a hobbit-sized human, one that stood no more than a meter tall.

Pub quiz 1. The Spanish Civil War started in 1936 and ended in which year? 2. Which two students founded Google in 1998? 3. In 1870 the Third Republic was declared in France after which leader was deposed? 4. Which US President had the middle name Milhous? 5. The horror of Guernica was portrayed in a painting by which artist? 6. How many notes are there in a musical scale?

Answers: 1. 1939 2. Larry Page and Sergey Brin 3. Emperor Napolean III 4. Richard Nixon 5. Pablo Picasso 6. 7 38

April 2022

LIFE HACK Want ice cold wine that isn’t watered down? If you add ice cubes the wine becomes diluted as they melt; luckily, there is a trick that will cool your wine and keep it tasting just as great - it looks lovely, too! All you have to do is add frozen grapes to your glass. They immediately cool down the drink without diluting the liquid.

TEABREAK

THUMBS UP!

A marathon challenge A mother-of-three is running the equivalent of 76 marathons in a year to raise money for a children’s charity, BBC News has reported. Lindsey Thurlow, from Swindon in Wiltshire, has already raised more than £3,000 for Make-A-Wish UK, which creates life-changing wishes for seriously ill children. “On the bad days I think of those children and tell myself to get on with it,” she said. She hopes to complete the 1,986-mile (3,196km) challenge by April. Lindsey, a keen runner, decided to take on the challenge after hearing that the Make-A-Wish charity was in desperate need of money. “There are some amazing wishes - anything from getting a bucket to go to the seaside, to meeting their idol,” said Lindsey. She chose her target figure to mark 1986, which was the year the charity granted its first wish in the UK.

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QUOTE OF THE MONTH Do not go where the path may lead; go instead where there is no path, and leave a trail Ralph Waldo Emerson

What a wonderful world Are we living in a hologram? The laws of physics demand that we cannot see through a black hole’s event horizon; it is fundamentally impenetrable - even light cannot escape it. However, in a new study, a physicist from the University of Michigan has proposed a technique to do just that, and his findings could help solve one of science’s most challenging problems, Sky News has reported. The study, published in the journal PRX Quantum, even adds weight to the theory that the universe is a hologram; this idea has been misinterpreted as the theoretical physics equivalent of Plato’s Cave, which is an ancient allegory about mankind’s inability to truly perceive reality. This misunderstanding is, perhaps, partially due to the popularity of films such as The Matrix - but the theory, formally known as ‘Holographic Duality’, is actually a mathematical model wth the potential to reconcile one of science’s greatest conundrums.

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Well, knock me down with a feather!

POLLY WANTS A CAMERA As reported by Sky News, a thieving parrot offered a remarkable birds-eye view of a national park in New Zealand after picking up a GoPro camera and flying off. A family were having a rest during a trek when the parrot was filmed swooping down, picking up the device and making a swift getaway. The camera kept on filming as the bird flew high above the tree-covered hills of the Fiordland National Park in Te Anau. The feathered fiend was a kea parrot, a species which is native to the park and known for its curiosity. After the brief aerial tour, it placed the camera down on the ground and gave it a close inspection before losing interest and flying off.

April 2022 39

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C U LT U R E O F R E S P E C T

Restoring T a culture of respect VAL ANDREW discusses how, after the last two years of chaos, you can restore collaborative and fully-supportive staffing structures in your school

April 2022

he last decade has seen a consistent lack of investment in our education sector. The impact of this has had a plethora of consequences for our schools, one of which has been a trend towards staffing reductions, mainly within the ranks of the support staff. One of the saddest things that has happened as a direct result of this is the re-emergence of a culture where the ‘worth’ of some roles is questioned and challenged. We seem to have been transported back to the early 2000s when, in the aftermath of ‘workforce reform’, there was widespread cynicism about some support staff roles and their impact on student attainment. It wasn’t really until around 2010, when Ofsted published the last in a series of reports that examined the impact of workforce reform based on evidence they had collected from visits to many schools, that attitudes started to change. These reports dispelled the myths and validated the very positive impact a professionalised support staff structure can have on educational improvement and pupil progress. Here and now, in 2022, all school leaders face huge challenges; taking into account this issue of attitudes - and adding into the equation things like the ongoing development/growth of MATs, the impact of the pandemic, supporting pupils to catch up what they’ve missed in the last two years, ongoing pressures to deliver more efficiencies, a renewed focus on mental health, and a serious lack of funding - we have a toxic mix. Arguably, the foundation for any strategy to address these many challenges is based upon a culture of respect and restoring collaborative and fully-supportive staffing structures. As the most senior members of support staff, SBMs and SBLs play a very important role in this.

C U LT U R E O F R E S P E C T

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People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel - Maya Angelou HOW CAN THIS BE ACHIEVED? Ditch the term ‘non-teaching staff’(NTS) – those of you who know me are well aware this is one of my pet hates! It’s a legacy term that creates unnecessary barriers and unnecessary divisions, and makes people feel less useful and important. Where else in the world is a group of staff categorised by what they don’t do? I’m a non-brain surgeon and a nonastronaut and a million other ‘nons’ but what’s really important is what I am, and what I can do. Sadly, this term still appears within education narrative – it’s derisory and should be kicked very hard into the long grass. The Ofsted reports referenced above talked about professionalising support staff – and didn’t use that NTS term!

Develop clear understanding – ensure everyone in school has a good understanding of what individuals actually do and value the diversity of their different roles. We all have hidden talents too! The classic example is the NASA story; back in 1961, when President John F Kennedy was visiting NASA headquarters for the first time, he introduced himself to a janitor who was mopping the floor and asked him what he did at NASA. “I’m helping to put a man on the moon” was the janitor’s response. The janitor got it - he understood the vision, and his part in it, and this gave him purpose and motivation. It’s important to make sure everyone at school knows how their role contributes to the school goals and vision, regardless of whether this impact is direct or indirect.

Encourage development – one of the key findings in that Ofsted report mentioned earlier was the impact that the professionalisation of roles had achieved. I can hear you all shouting at me that the budget is under pressure, and there are limited resources to pursue training opportunities, but there are ways of delivering development without incurring excessive costs. Willingness to invest in an individual creates goodwill and can lead to commitment; empowering individuals can also help to build confidence and respect.

Communicate – good and effective communication tends to be the solution to many challenges and issues arising in schools (and everywhere else for that matter!) Lots of schools have had to reflect on, and refine, their communication methods over the last two years. It’s a healthy process to keep this under review to ensure you are fulfilling all the key characteristics of effective communication. (There’s a whole section on this in the BPN DSBM Leading Support Services Unit)

Great leadership – mostly this manifests itself in good, top-down, role-modelling. Managing change (and there’s been plenty of that happening) is hard. Great school

leaders tend to be passionate and good team builders. Being able to talk to, listen to, empathise with, congratulate, call out disrespectful behaviours, share information and promote teamwork are just a few of the essential characteristics of great leadership.

Understand need(s) – building on the previous point, it’s important to understand what motivates and drives people. The focus of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs encapsulates how diverse the needs of each individual can be at any given time. Knowing what is going on in someone’s life can be insightful from a leadership perspective. I am not suggesting all leaders become ‘agony aunts’ but that personal knowledge and emotional intelligence is a very powerful tool to have in your leadership toolkit when trying to build a culture of respect. SUMMARY Treating everyone fairly and equitably is vital in building a respectful community. The important thing is establishing the right attitudes and working practices. It doesn’t matter what the specific role of an individual undertakes; whether that involves standing in front of pupils or not, there remains the potential to impact positively on their learning (both social and academic) – it may be ensuring that the learning environment is suitably resourced and fit-for-purpose. We are all adult role models for the pupils, regardless of our actual jobs – never underestimate the importance of this. Initiatives tend to go in 10-year cycles – I am old enough to substantiate this concept! It’s likely that, at some point in the not-too-distant future, a government will commit to investing in education and this will present the opportunity to expand staffing levels once more. Let’s not forget valuable lessons learned in the past about inclusivity and let’s ensure those old legacy attitudes and behaviours stay where they should be – in the past!

VAL ANDREW ● P rogramme

manager for Best Practice Network DSBM Level 4 - find out more: https://www.bestpracticenet. co.uk/dsbm-l4 ● P atron of ISBL. ● F ormerly ASCL School Business Leadership Specialist (2010 - 2018). ● R ecipient of ISBL CEO Award for exceptional contributions to school business leadership in 2018. ● Semi - retired SBL and very proud grandma.

April 2021 2022 41 September

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60 SECONDS

6 0 S E C O N D S W IT H CLARE SKINNER, business manager, talks to us about French wine, her achievements in the SBP role, and chasing two pigs around her school! What led to your current role? I wanted to get back to work after a four-year career break as a full-time mum of two boys and relocating from London to the Midlands.

Clare Skinner, business manager, King’s Norton Girls’ School

Tell me something unusual or interesting about yourself. I’m not really unusual; I am a wife, a mum, a friend, a neighbour, a colleague, chair of the local SBP network group and member of local MAT board. That is enough to keep me busy and out of trouble. I do love a good bottle of French red wine, though, so it’s handy that my parents live in France! What has been your favourite aspect of working as a school business professional so far? Being able to challenge the status quo and lead change that has a positive impact on our students. Being part of SLT, and having strong relationships with my headteacher and governing body, is key to this; I am very lucky in these respects. What’s been your greatest professional achievement to date? Is it wrong to say I have a lot? Getting my DSBM when I first started the role, getting funding for various projects in my settings, upskilling and developing my teams, overseeing a huge new build project, supporting colleagues when they’ve been going through very difficult times, surviving (just about) the pandemic and the chaos it has caused. I try to have a small moment of achievement each day; I find that keeps me going! How do you ensure that you continue to grow personally and professionally? I keep up-to-date with the sector and talk

April 2022

to people - LOTS of people, both in and outside of education. I accept that I don’t have all of the answers, but I want to have them! I have signed up to start my Level 7 CIPFA Diploma in School Financial and Operational Leadership later this year as I think this is what I need next. Where do you take inspiration from, both work and life-wise? Everywhere. I won’t limit where I look to make me better as a person or as an SBP. Inspiration comes from the strangest places sometimes. What three words would you use to describe your role? Varied, challenging and wow! (Due to some of the things I get asked about, or get asked to do - I can’t fathom some of them!) If there was one thing about your job you could change, what would it be? I wish I could deliver everything that is needed, as it is needed. I don’t like having to say ‘No’, or prioritising one thing over another. I wish I could provide everything that the students need to be successful - that’s not always down to money, either; other things can be blockers. I keep trying though, and love to be able to find solutions to problems that can, initially, seem insurmountable. Funniest SBM moment you’d care to share? Chasing two pigs around the school site on a Sunday morning when a neighbour reported that they had escaped from the school farm. The headteacher, site manager and I had to corral them back into their pen, which took a while. Pigs are faster than you think! 

A TAILOR-MADE DAY FOR SBL SUPERHEROES We may not have tailor-made tights, capes and pants-on-the-outside for our SBL superheroes, but we are one of the only events that allows you to build your own itinerary and select only the seminars that are of interest to you and your school. By selecting specific seminar topics relevant to you, you can be sure that your day will be filled with information and learning that will be directly relevant to you and your school’s current requirements.

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