School Admin News

Coping with the world of endless change

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.