A major report suggesting how more money can reach education front line services in Wales has been published by Education Minister Leighton Andrews.  Although it doesn’t say that it will cut admin services in schools this could be one way in which they are thinking.

If it is, the only defence, in my view, is to show that administration within each school is fundamental to the well-being of the school.

The report calculates the cost of administering education across Wales. It considers the numbers working in administering the education system, and crucially identifies opportunities to move resources from administration to the delivery of front line services.

The report analyses £4.1 billion of the annual expenditure on the education system in Wales of which direct funding for learning and teaching and other education expenditure accounts for 68 per cent of the total. The remaining 32 per cent is made up of support services, such as service management and financial administration.

The report identifies key opportunities for exploration grouped under two key themes.

The first, Simplifying Governance, includes continuing to look for opportunities to simplify the structure of grant schemes. The second, Standardising and Sharing Provision, includes exploring the opportunity for further development of more regional consortia sharing educational support. There may also be more scope for schools to form clusters to share resources and facilities.

Education Minister Leighton Andrews said: “I have made it clear that I want to ensure more funding reaches the education front line – our schools, colleges and universities.

“Much has already been done across the public sector in Wales, specifically within education to deliver efficiencies and improve services to achieve the highest possible standards of education and training.

“The review is not about cuts in funding, but freeing up resources by changing the balance in funding between front line and support services.

“This review suggests some practical ideas and opportunities, laying strong foundations for action. We now require a step change to take these forward with purpose and urgency with all organisations involved in the delivery of education having a crucial part to play.”

Tony Attwood

The problem is, that is the only part of the message there is – government is not very good at telling anyone how to make schools more efficient.

With this in mind, the School of Educational Administration has been working on a number of projects which are now coming to fruition.

Firstly there’s the Certificate in Management Practice: Educational Work Management and Administration course.

This course consists of one module from the QCA-recognised National Certificate in Educational Administration. It is taught by distance learning and lasts approximately two months. The course is taught at level 3 (A Level equivalent) and is aimed at school administrators and bursars.

The course comprises three units: Time Management; Stress Management; Dealing with School Visitors. You can see the prospectus on-line at www.admin.org.uk/prospectus.pdf or you can obtain it in printed form by calling 01536 399 007, or by emailing prospectus@admin.org.uk Most students find that the course takes about four hours a week study time.

The next intake closes on 4 June and the course starts on 14 June. If you are interested in encouraging any of your staff to do the course, there is more information at http://www.admin.org.uk/shortcourse.html

Secondly, there’s the School Efficiency Newsletter, which is a free weekly publication available by email to everyone interested in school efficiency. You can sign up to receive it at www.schools.co.uk/subscribe.html - and we give the guarantee that your email address will never be given to anyone outside the School of Educational Administration.

Although this move is often undertaken in the name of “efficiency” in effect it is a simple exploitation of the fact that school administrators and bursars are often less unionised than teachers, and tend to have contracts of employment which give them fewer rights and protections.

One of the most common approaches taken is to say that a regrading process is taking place, and that as a result, administrators are being put on lower grades and their salaries are being cut dramatically.

In commenting on this, let me make it clear that I am not a solicitor, and nor am I working from the offices of a trade union.  But I have taken advice from full time union officials, and from a solicitor, and their views coincide.

The basic view is that in most cases any attempt to reduce salaries or impose regrading is simply illegal.  I have put a link at the end of this article which will take you to a piece by a firm of solicitors that comments on this.

However many LAs and schools have got away with this because they approach the matter by simply imposing the changes and telling staff that this is all perfectly ok.    They are often advised by unscrupulous companies who basically help employers push through illegal deals of this sort.

What’s more, in a few cases, trade unions that should be supporting administrators seem to roll over and leave these cases alone.  This is desperately sad (especially when one is paying the union to look after one’s interests) but in the cases I have looked at it does seem to me that a local elected or volunteer official has been browbeaten or bullied by senior officials in the LA or school, and has just assumed that what the employer was doing was legal.

By putting the plan forward with the authority of the school or the LA it can feel to the individual employee that this must be legal and proper, and that the authority can do this.  After all schools and local authorities don’t break the law do they?

What’s more the approach is backed up with talk about “the need to make sacrifices” and the “good of the school” with suggestions that clearly the children have to have teachers, and so the number of teaching staff can’t be cut.

All of this is bunkum, in my opinion, because there are many ways in which schools can become more efficient – and cutting the admin staff’s salaries certainly has got nothing to do with efficiency.

I would never want to tell anyone what to do, especially when as I say I am neither a union official nor a solicitor but for what it is worth, my view is that if you want to fight an attempt to regrade your work or cut your salary, it is easy to do.

Here’s the link to an article by a solicitor on this very subject.  If I may quote one line from it…

“The starting point is to recognise that an employment contract cannot be unilaterally varied by one party without the consent of the other.”

http://www.lindermyers.co.uk/article.asp?id=872

Tony Attwood

The SEA has been running the Certificate in Educational Administration for five years, and this new course will be a continuation of its work.  However this new course, when launched, will be open to senior management, and heads of department as well as bursars and administrators.

The course focuses on ways in which schools can become more efficient and thus save themselves significant amounts of money – as required by the Audit Commission report.

Some examples of school efficiency given within the course include…

1.  Redesigning a room so that more students can fit in, or each student has more space

2.  Introducing an IT suite which has on line lessons for each subject, and then having students work on the on-line lessons in the IT suite if a teacher is away, rather than have a supply teacher for each absent colleague

3.  Cutting the cost of services (power, water, telephone) that are bought in by the school, or reducing the use of the services themselves

4.  Finding a way of raising significant sums of money for the school (we are not covering normal fund raising activities but instead are looking for more unusual activities that can raise significant amounts without much or any extra work by the staff.  For example, handing over the school playground at the weekend as a car park for the local shopping centre, or because the school is close to a football ground).

5.  Reducing the time taken to handle particular issues or problems.

6.  Using actors or musicians or sportspeople or others as an alternative to supply teachers on occasion

7.  Changing the way teaching works in order to enable the students to cover a course more quickly

8.  Changing the way absences are checked and chased

9.  Changing the way parents are contacted to reduce the time it takes while improving the speed

10. Improving the light or sound in a classroom so that pupils may be able to see or hear better

These are examples – but this is not the exclusive list.  Indeed we are particularly looking for ideas beyond this list.

If you have evolved an approach which has made your school more efficient and you would like to share it, I would like to hear from you.  We are looking for examples of recent efficiency programmes that could be quoted.  We will (unless asked not to) give the name of the person supplying the idea, and the school details, of every idea we include.   We will also (again unless asked not to) arrange free publicity for the school through articles in UK Education News and elsewhere.

To be included, what you need to do is to email in a brief report with an attached word file.   The document must be in word (not pdf) because if it is used in the course, it will need to be cut and pasted into the course materials.   If you have something on your web site that refers to this project please do also provide the link.

There are no length restrictions, but we imagine most pieces included will be between 250 and 1000 words in length – but if you need more space that’s not a problem.

If you want to talk to me about this, please do call 01536 399 013, or if you prefer, but email Tony@schools.co.uk and I’ll be pleased to supply any other information.   If you want to know more about the School of Educational Administration the details are at www.admin.org.uk

Tony Attwood

The company which came out top from you was one which we have mentioned before on this newsgroup – PRM Green Technologies.  Here are some of your comments about them:

“We have just had a lot of ICT equipment picked up for recycling for free by PRM Green Technologies. Go to their website to see how much you need to have for them to pick up for free. They were very efficient.”

“We got excellent service, totally free from a very professional outfit called prmgreen technology.”

“We’ve used   PRM Green Technologies Ltd., who used to be “the great recycling shed in Cannock”, but they appear to have grown,  and moved to Rugeley.  They have a lovely green and orange(ish) web site – just put PRM Green into google and it shows lots of info about them and what they take etc.  Last time they came, we had to e-mail them a list of what we wanted to throw out, then they came back with a pick up day.  They seem pretty reliable, and take on the responsibility for correct disposal according to all the EU rules etc”

Other companies mentioned favourably by you were:

ReCover-IT seems to be mostly a free service but there can be a small charge in London, the South and Scotland.

ITR Recyclying – at the time of writing their website was down!

RefurbIT UK Ltd – I looked at their website and could not see any statement about free collection so there may be a charge involved with them.

Thank you as ever for your helpful feedback.
Tony Attwood
School of Educational Administration

First, you’ll want to have it removed free of charge from your school.
Second, you’ll want to be assured that it is going to be treated in the most environmentally friendly way possible.
Third, you’ll also need to be assured that all the data on the drives will be wiped to the highest standards possible.
And that’s exactly what PRM Green Technologies does. Indeed we do it with not just computers but also screens, printers and other equipment too.

What’s more, all the equipment is then recycled and disposed of within the UK – all without any charge.

At the end of the process PRM issues you with free certification evidence so you can see that the correct procedures were complied with.

The only requirements we have are that you have at least 30 items to collect and that they are all gathered together in one easily accessible place for our driver.

We can take PC base units, CRT monitors, TFT monitors, servers, laptops, server racks, switches, telecom switches and printers, and as long as you have 30 of these items they will take away other IT equipment such as keyboards, cabling telecoms.

For more information please give me a call on 0800 840 9195 or fill in the form by clicking here www.prmgreentech.com/contact.htm.

If there is one message that reaches the offices of the School of Educational Administration more than any other it is that of the new tasks and issues that are coming into Administration – often with little attempt to give proper training.

What is increasingly clear is that it is more and more important for everyone working in school administration to have a knowledge and awareness of not just what is happening in their own office but the wider issues concerning education. There are a number of courses and services available for school administrators to keep up with the endless changes in education. An important development is the availability of inhouse courses available that can be taken to train teaching assistants and school administrators.

With this in mind the SEA runs two services.   First there is the issue of supplying information relating to what is happening in schooling now, in the most easy to use form.  Second is the issue of training.

We have addressed the issue of information with a completely free service – an education news headline service which is updated throughout the day.  At any time you wish you can go to www.UKEducationNews.co.uk and see all the latest education news headlines.  If any story is of interest to you, you just click on it, and you get the full details.

The service also carries school press releases for free, so you might want to pass the information on to your colleagues in the school.

The second service is the running of our two courses specifically designed for school administrators: The one year Certificate in Educational Administration, and the two month course in Work Management and Administration.

Both courses are taught by distance learning, and many administrators who take the courses feel that not only do they learn a huge amount about educational administration, they also gain much higher recognition from colleagues from having taken such a course.

The prospectus for the courses is at http://www.admin.org.uk/Prospectus.pdf and you can obtain a printed prospectus by calling 01536 399 007 or by emailing Prospectus@admin.org.uk There is also a lot more information on www.admin.org.uk – just click on the “more information” panel.

Registration for the one-year course closes on 5 March, and for the two-month course closes on 19 March.

At the end of last year the government announced an efficiency programme which involved putting smart meters in schools, and I wrote asking for feedback from any reader who had been approached about this promotion.

Here are some of the responses I got:

In response to your email regarding free AMR installation through a government scheme; we have been notified by our LA about the installation but there is a cost linked to this that customers need to be made aware of, quoted below:

‘The annual cost of this service depends on the type of electrical supply and the frequency of the billing and is between £57 and £114 per annum.  This cost will be added to your monthly/quarterly invoice’.

We are actually opting out because we are a very small school and have regular meter readings so cannot see the benefit of paying this annual charge.

We were asked about free smart meters for gas (we already have it for electricity having sourced it ourselves and paid for it).

We responded saying we would be very keen for free smart metering on the gas but never heard anymore. How do we make it happen – we are about to sign a contract for AMR with our supplier Gazprom.  This will cost us so should we hang on? However, if we did pay Gazprom now we would get it now.  The sluggishness of centralised political initiatives is really frustrating.

We have just had a new smart meter fitted – Monday this week.  We have not had to pay for it.  Not aware it is a trial, all schools are having them on a permanent basis.

No I haven’t but would be very interested in receiving one for my school.

We have not been approached, but we had just identified the need for a smart meter when it was announced. If you find out anything about how we could access one I would be grateful to hear.

I have not been contacted here regarding this scheme. Sounds very interesting!

I would be very interested in taking part in this, but I have not seen any information on it.  If you could send my something, I would be very grateful and I will follow it up from there.

We are very interested and would love someone to contact us if you have any information would be grateful!

Never heard of this scheme but I would have been very interested in this scheme. The only scheme we have been involved in is the Green Energy for Schools – Cooperative.  We were given a grant of £20,000 for 20 solar panels to be installed on our roof.  These were installed last April and therefore will have a good guide at the end of the financial year to see what energy savings we have made.

Sadly, our school has not been offered this – was the trial in any specific area/through a particular supplier?

No, we haven’t been contacted about this. We have been “invited” to instal meters which monitor usage at £30+ each per annum (we are a small school but have 3 electricity meters and one gas one, so that would cost £120+ per annum).

There were many other replies replicating these comments.  I’m gathering more information on this and will return to the topic shortly.

Work Management and Administration Course

The Work Management and Administration course for school administrators is a distance learning programme – which means you can undertake the course without taking any time off work.

The programme lasts for two months and consists of three units covering three vital areas of school administration…

• Time Management;
• Stress Management;
• Dealing with School Visitors

Students participate in on-line tutorials on each of the three units of the course. These are not assessed in terms of marks, but participation is compulsory as they represent an opportunity for students to discuss the course content with colleagues from around the country.

Students have repeatedly reported that the on-line tutorials via the virtual learning environment are particularly useful as they allow them an insight into school administration in other schools and also allow them to discuss the course and the assignments with other students.

Within the course you must also write one essay from a choice of topics at the end of the course.  Once you have passed this course you will be able (if you wish) to join the full National Certificate course, obtaining an exemption from Module 2 (Work Management) and a reduction in the overall fees.

The printed prospectus of the course can be obtained by emailing Prospectus@admin.org.uk  or by phoning 01536 399 007.   The prospectus of both this and the full one year course are available on line at http://www.admin.org.uk/Prospectus.pdf

The next intake for the two month Work Management and Administration course starts on 22 February 2010 – with the closing date for applications being is 12 February.

One of the big problems with old IT equipment (computers, screens, printers, etc) is that some councils and other collection services either charge for taking the items away or insist that you deliver the equipment to their site.

I have spoken to a company – PRM Green Technologies – who will come to your school and collect your old IT equipment for recycling free of charge.The equipment is then recycled and disposed of within the UK – all without any charge. 

The drivers are CRB checked, and they even destroy all residual data on redundant media.  (Apparently there is an official standard known as DOD 5220.22-M to which they work.) 

As a result the school is completely covered under the Data Protection Act.At the end of the process PRM will issue you with free certification evidence so you can see that the correct procedures were complied with.

The only requirements they have are that you have at least 30 items to collect and that they are all gathered together in one easily accessible place for their driver. 

They can take PC base units, CRT monitors, TFT monitors, servers, laptops, server racks, switches, telecom switches and printers and as long as you have 30 of these items they will take away other IT equipment such as keyboards, cabling telecoms.

For more information you can give them a call on 0800 840 9195, email them on recycle@prmgreentech.com or fill in the form by clicking here www.prmgreentech.com/contact.htm

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