School Admin News

The thesis behind this report is simple: just as there are a hundred ways of teaching a lesson in the classroom, so there are a hundred ways of organising a school office. The problem is that traditionally the focus of the school has been on what happens in the classroom, while the school office has been treated as something that is as it is. Because of this, school administration has tended to evolve quite slowly, while teaching and learning have undergone radical transformations.

However, observation suggests that different schools do organise their administrations in different ways, and that some approaches can make a significant difference to the effectiveness and efficiency of the school’s work.

At the heart of the book is the notion that there is a way of organising school administration that is much more effective than any other approach. This approach does not require a higher budget; it simply puts in place processes that inevitably lead to a smoother throughput of information and activity, which means there are fewer disruptions, fewer errors, and ultimately more time for everything to be done. The report covers issues such as the structure of the administration of the school, work management within the administrative department, change management, facilities management, budgeting, organisational behaviour and legal issues within the school office.

One of the fundamental issues within the report is that changes only work to the benefit of the organisation when everyone understands what is going on and why the changes are being implemented. For this reason Increasing the Efficiency of School Administration is available as a photocopiable report, which allows you to give sections of the report to your colleagues. There is no restriction on the number of copies that can be made. An edition of the book is also available on CD Rom for printing out via Word.

The report was written by Tony Attwood, the director of the School of Educational Administration. Since 2005 the School has been running the Certificate in Educational Administration course and recently launched a new Diploma in School Efficiency.

There are sample pages from the photocopiable book at http://www.pdf.firstandbest.co.uk/bursar/T1744.pdf

Publisher’s reference: T1744EMN ISBN: 978 1 86083 798 2

Prices

Photocopiable book: £29.95 plus £3.95 delivery
CD with school-wide rights: £29.95 plus £3.95 delivery
Both the book and the CD: £36.94 plus £3.95 delivery
Prices include VAT.

You can purchase the report… please quote the order ref: T1744EMN

By post to First and Best, Hamilton House, Earlstrees Ct., Earlstrees Way, Corby, NN17 4HH
By fax to 01536 399 012
On line with a credit card at http://shop.firstandbest.co.uk/product_info.php?cPath=26&products_id=568

It is extraordinary to think that schools can make significant savings year by year just by changing the way things are done.

To many of us it hardly seems credible that a simple rearrangement of processes can make such a difference, and yet it is true.

It might come from a timetabling change to the way in which GCSE is taught or an alteration to the way in which catering is handled. It might come from using a different method to communicate with parents or a re-arrangement of the way in which IT rooms are prepared.

Some savings might be modest – a few thousand pounds a year – but they continue every year. Others can be huge and immediate – over £50000 in one case.

Week by week managers and administrators who join efficiency courses run by the School of Education Administration report on the projects that they are undertaking as part of the courses they work on. These projects are then shared between all the students on the course, so that others can look and see how these new ideas can be used in their own school.

In fact the database of efficiencies which the SEA is developing is the only such database in the UK, and is in itself an invaluable resource.

Two school efficiency courses are run by the SEA: the 14 week Certificate in School Efficiency and the one year Diploma in School Efficiency. Both courses are distance learning, with no need to attend any seminars or conferences.

The next intake of both courses closes on 30 January, with the courses starting on 6 February.

There are more details on www.admin.org.uk. If you would like a printed prospectus or you have any enquiries please call 01536 399 007 or email Sam@admin.org.uk

Tony Attwood
Director, SEA

When heads and deputy heads are asked if they or other managers in the school have asked colleagues to come up with thoughts about increasing school efficiency, 93% say yes they have.

But when school administrators, business managers, bursars and site managers are asked if anyone has suggested that they might think of ways of helping the school become more efficient only 51% say they have been asked.

And when heads of department in schools are asked if any manager in the school has asked them to suggest ways of finding efficiencies in the school, only 37% say they have been asked.

In other words while heads and deputy heads feel sure that they are inviting colleagues to become involved in thinking about school efficiency, when those colleagues are asked far fewer feel they have been asked.

Of course there could be a bit of a statistical oddity here – the heads might have asked person A and not person B – whereas person B filled in our questionnaire saying “no”. But other information in the survey suggests that where the issue is raised by heads and deputies it is put out as a question to all senior staff and/or all admin staff.

So what’s going wrong?

From the work that we’ve been doing in the SEA and from the reports that have been produced by people on the Certificate and Diploma of School Efficiency courses, the answer seems to be this:

Simply asking people to think about and come up with ideas about efficiency, doesn’t really work very well. Yes, some good ideas can come up, but simply asking for ideas doesn’t get people to focus centrally on efficiency.

This is a great shame because some of the efficiency projects that we have seen run in schools this last year have been incredibly effective, saving schools thousands or tens of thousands of pounds a year.

But they are rarely ideas that are just thought of – rather they are ideas that arise from taking a completely fresh look at the way something works in the school.

I’ll continue with this theme later and reveal some of the ideas that people have come up with concerning school efficiency, but if you would like to read more about our work and our courses, the details are on www.admin.org.uk

Tony Attwood
School of Educational Administration

It is extraordinary to think that schools can make significant savings year by year just by changing the way things are done.

To many of us it hardly seems credible that a simple rearrangement of processes can make such a difference, and yet it is true.

It might come from a timetabling change to the way in which GCSE is taught or an alteration to the way in which catering is handled. It might come from using a different method to communicate with parents or a re-arrangement of the way in which IT rooms are prepared.

Some savings might be modest – a few thousand pounds a year – but they continue every year. Others can be huge and immediate – over £50000 in one case.

Week by week managers and administrators who join efficiency courses run by the School of Education Administration report on the projects that they are undertaking as part of the courses they work on. These projects are then shared between all the students on the course, so that others can look and see how these new ideas can be used in their own school.

In fact the database of efficiencies which the SEA is developing is the only such database in the UK, and is in itself an invaluable resource.

Two school efficiency courses are run by the SEA: the 14 week Certificate in School Efficiency and the one year Diploma in School Efficiency. Both courses are distance learning, with no need to attend any seminars or conferences.

The next intake of both courses closes on 30 January, with the courses starting on 6 February.

There are more details on www.admin.org.uk. If you would like a printed prospectus or you have any enquiries please call 01536 399 007 or email Sam@admin.org.uk

Tony Attwood
Director, SEA

Last month I wrote about whether parents should be able to pay for school meals on-line and whether there was indeed demand for this option. In response I received an email from a reader stating that in their experience bank charges made this option impossibly expensive.  I published this letter in a subsequent newsletter to you and asked for comments. 

There was quite a lot of interest in this topic and I have to say that most of you suggested that:

1. For schools with fewer that 250 pupils it was prohibitively expensive to accept payments on-line – or via any other cashless system.
2. While the original article that I published suggested that 90% of parents wanted to pay on-line, this does not seem to be the general experience with some of you reporting less than 15% take up of an on-line payment system.

However to balance things out there were some schools who reported running successful on-line payment systems through:

1. An LA funded system
2. Via ParentPay or Tucasi (no idea what the charges are)
3. In one case a purpose built cashless school where the payment cards have multiple function (access, printing etc).

A sample of the replies is below.

Tony Attwood

We do online payments not only for lunch but termly payments, residential trips – all sorts. We use a company called Tucassi and whilst there are charges made via the bank these are pence not pounds. We are a large junior school of 600 children and the cost benefit far out weighs what it would cost us in time paper and everything else to do it manually. More and more parents choose to make their payments this way all the time and prefer the security and ease it provides.

I also investigated and it was the fees imposed by the banks that made payments on line non-feasible for us as a fairly small school (205 on roll). It raised the question who covered these fees, the parent or the school and in the current financial climate it seemed unreasonable to increase costs to parents but likewise on an ever shrinking budget didn’t feel we as a school could cover them either.

Our bank charges us 50p per transaction with a minimum of £10 per month.  At the moment we are not getting many parents on board so are paying the £10 a month without the benefit of lots of parents using the system!

All the arguments are valid.  We moved into a new school building in September and had all brand new systems.  This included cashless catering and online payment for school dinners.  There is no doubt at all that it reduces the stigma of free school meals because it is seamless and is good for the parents where they prefer to pay online.  The kitchen is cashless as there was no reason to invest in tills in the new building.  For students with cash there are ‘cashloaders’ in the school reception area where students flash their cards and put cash in the slots, their balance is updated instantly.
There is another option to cashloaders and online payments.  Parents can have a ‘Paypoint’ card which they can use at any paypoint machine (in this town they seem to be at the Co-op stores mostly) and can add cash to their child’s account there. So I guess the question is why don’t all schools move this way?  The answer is that cashless systems are costly.  Once you introduce parents payment online (not costly) you need a dinner card and therein lies massive costs.  As a school with a new building and all new systems each student and staff member has a card which are multi purpose – they are used for school meals, access to the school building from outside and then before 8am and after 4pm acess internally to certain areas of the school, in other words we can lock down areas.  They are also used for printing – from your computer you print to a ‘follow-me’ queue and then go to a printer, flash your card and print your work.
Only in this way can you justify the cost of the cards.  
We did look at cashless catering long before the new school and it was just not financially viable.  I went out and visited schools that did have it but what I found was that generally they were schools with in excess of 280 pupils in a school year.

We starting using +Pay last March and have been disappointed with the number of parents who pay online for their school meals.  I would say there is about 15% and they pay for everything online.  Our parents can pay for meals, trips, residentials, uniform and clubs.  I was hoping online payments would really take off and reduce the amount of cash and cheques handled, but unfortunately for us this has not been the case.

Our school uses ‘Parent Pay’, although I do not know how much the charge. We use a fingerprint cashless system in our canteen which avoids students having to bring money into school. Parents can pay through a website or through a pay point in some shops, as far as I’m aware.
Tony Attwood
School of Educational Administration

According to analyses by E-Teach the most commonly advertised vacancy in schools in the past 10 months has been…. Administrator, with 1500 vacancies advertised.

The highest teaching subject total was English with 1171 adverts, followed by maths with 1159. There were 482 adverts for headteachers.

The other most in demand subjects were science, DT and ICT.

At the other extreme, geology, home economics, communication studies and global studies each only had one vacancy advertised.

Of course these are just the numbers of adverts on one website, and not representative of the total across the country, but it is fairly likely that the proportion of numbers will be similar to that on a national scale.
Tony Attwood
School of Educational Administration

The Training and Development Agency for Schools has just released an email in which it says, “we feel the time is right for the education community to take a lead in creating its own tools…”

The statement is a prelude to the fact that the TDAs database of continuing professional development is about to close down.

It is another step towards leaving schools ever more to their own devices.

But fortunately the development does not affect the School of Educational Administration. We were set up with government funding some six years ago, and our development was aided by a significant input from the University of Northampton. Since those early days we have been self-funded through the modest charge we make for our courses and materials, and support from business and industry which allows us to have rent-free office space.

So I’d like to reiterate that our courses and our free support for administrators, bursars and school business managers will continue unabated. You can read about all that we are doing on www.admin.org.uk
Tony Attwood
School of Educational Administration

I am wondering how efficiency improvements are found in schools. Could you answer this very simple questionnaire for me – it will only take one minute. And I would welcome your contribution even if your school is doing nothing about efficiency.

Your details won’t be recorded and every response will be treated in absolute confidence.

Link to survey

Many thanks

Tony Attwood
Hamilton House Mailings Ltd 

When the School of Educational Administration launched its Certificate in School Efficiency programme no one quite knew which efficiencies schools would report.

But now we’ve had several cohorts of school managers and administrators on the course we know – and the savings schools are making are really extraordinary.

Perhaps the most dramatic savings being achieved through efficiencies are those being made to school meals arrangements, the way photocopying is organised, IT provision, school cleaning contracts and the movement away from letters to parents to an automated text system. 

Savings of over £1000 a year have been made in some cases – and a few have been much, much higher.

But these are just examples, and there are many other savings and efficiency changes being reported – many of which will have dramatic cumulative effects over the coming years.

Details of these reports and savings are being made available to everyone who takes the course, which means managers and administrators now taking the course benefit from seeing the efficiencies made by those who have gone before (making this by far the largest exchange of knowledge on school efficiency within the UK).  

The next 10 week Certificate in School Efficiency course (which is taught by distance learning) will close its intake of students on 30 January with the course commencing on 6 February. 

In the most simple of terms the course aims to save all schools that participate considerably more than it costs to go on the course, not just during the course, but every term thereafter.

The ten week course costs £249 plus VAT.  There are more details on www.admin.org.uk   

If you have any enquiries or would like to see a printed prospectus please call the SEA’s course admin office on 01536 399 007, or email prospectus@admin.org.uk
Tony Attwood
School of Educational Administration

We had nearly 200 replies from readers in relation to my recent query about school proms, and they were immensely varied and very interesting indeed.

In summary, the heart of the Prom activity in schools is generally the Head of Year 11.  But in saying that I would not suggest that there are only Proms in secondary schools, for we had a fair number of replies from primaries too.

Here, as in many secondaries, the PTA can be a central part of the organisation, along perhaps with one member of staff who volunteers for the job of getting the show on the road.

Schools with sixth forms tend to have a sixth form committee which meets along with the head of sixth form or another designated member of staff.  But there were many other “titles” that got involved.  The Business and Enterprise Director is just one such example.

As for funding, this generally comes from fund raising for the event to pay for everything that the school puts on, and I get the feeling that a growing number of schools use the Prom as a promotional activity.  Certainly some respondents wrote about the fact that the local paper could be invited to take some photos, and how the school photographer would be used to take pictures to be put on the school website.

Some events are held in the school, but others go elsewhere. There was mention of a local hotel being booked for a formal dinner followed by speeches, ‘silly’ awards to staff &  pupils and a disco.  I rather liked that.

Here’s one individual comment related to a school in a coastal town…

The sea front road is closed and holiday makers and townsfolk turn out in their hundreds to see the students arrive in everything from limos to tanks and rickshaws. It is a major event with red carpet arrival, etc etc.

Students who fail to meet expectations are not allowed to attend: a big incentive.

As well as a big right of passage for the students it is also a major marketing tool for the college as all the young people are in formal dress. Many teaching and non teaching staff attend also.

Our post 16 students also have a prom but not quite so high profile.

A prom is a right of passage but I strongly feel that it is only appropriate for older students in Year 11 and above.

Here’s other comments I liked or simply found helpful or insightful…

• Most of the 18 year olds progressed to a night club afterwards (accompanied by a few brave staff).

• Parents have to sign a consent slip taking responsibility for the behaviour of the pupils

• No all boy/girl tables

• Venue searches all students as they enter and they have to produce their ticket, they are crossed off against a list that I supply the venue with.

• For many years we have organised a Thames Cruise for our Year 11 leavers.  This was originally organised by the Key Stage 4 Co-ordinator and is still overseen by her.  However, we have a good relationship with a local travel company who arranges coaches, the boat etc.  Payments are made via our admin department.  We arrange for a photographer to come to the school before the coaches leave and photos are taken of couples, friendship groups, etc.  Students have to pay for these at the time of the photo being taken.

• An enormous amount of work and effort goes into making the room fairytale like, we have a stock of material and lights which has been accumulated over the years.  We hire external contractors to provide balloons, fireworks, etc., and our Catering staff put on the food.  This is all done within a break even budget, from tickets sales and fund raising from the students during the year.

But it is clear that there is pressure from those in primary and middle schools to join in the fun.

Here’s just one example, but it summarises several comments that I saw:

• As a middle school, we are coming under continual pressure from parents to hold a “prom” for our leavers each year.  We are constantly resisting this pressure on the grounds that our pupils who are aged 12/13 years are too young for this type of event.  Instead we hold a BBQ/disco on site, which is organised by a couple  of our  TA’s  with Head of KS3 support.  Parents are generally accepting of this decision, but we do have some each year who kick up a fuss because we are not allowing the children to grow up!

There was so much more – it would take page after page to report everything – if I have not used your comment (and that means the vast majority of comments) my apologies.

What I would say was that the massive majority of comments were to the effect that the proms were incredibly popular and incredibly successful, and good both for those attending and for the school in general.

Finally I was given this link to a prom company.  I can’t vouch for them personally, but if you are looking for help and support you might like to explore what they have to offer.

www.thepromorganiser.co.uk

Again, and as always, thanks to everyone who took time to respond to the enquiry.
Tony Attwood
School of Educational Administration