The School of Educational Administration is in the final stages of producing a course for heads, deputies, bursars, managers and administrators, on school efficiency.   We are looking for a few more examples of ways in which schools have increased their efficiency in recent years.

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