MANAGEMENT {CPD}
That sinking feeling Feel like you’re drowning? Scared by the complexities required by absolutely everything? Facing the consequences of trying to fulfil a job description you are not skilled to do? STEPHEN PEACH, assistant headteacher and business manager, Dacorum Education Support Centre, has felt like this too and has some advice on how to deal with these feelings
I
’m relatively new to being a business manager. Before moving across, I was an all-age teacher (literally for-adult, including teaching IT at secondary level) with a degree in architecture and experience of graphic design with a little project management thrown in for good measure. A very useful skillset for a school business manager as all those things combine perfectly in one role. I feel that, if any area of that knowledge or experience was lacking, I wouldn’t have sufficient skills to do my job. It’s concerned me a lot to see the
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November 2021
struggles that my new colleagues suffer when trying to complete tasks they have no knowledge or experience of, in a context they struggle to empathise with. Two recent cases in point. A couple of years ago, when the national minimum wage went up six per cent, I had the embarrassment of sitting through a presentation by a representative from county bemoaning the fact and reeling off the potential knock-on consequences. This merely highlighted the fact that they had never worked in schools. The few people on minimum wage
