School Admin News

Yes, but how do we actually become more efficient?

Throughout recent speeches the government has repeatedly mentioned that efficiency has to be the new watchword in education.  And while the budget for 2010/11 remains at the level that was set three years ago, there is a clear suggestion from the schools’ minister that schools must work to make themselves more efficient.

For many school managers the question asked is, how does one do this.  How does one make a school more efficient?  The government has come up with one idea (echoing the report by the Audit Commission last summer): we should all try to cut our power bills.  

Which is fine, but after that – what next? I believe there is a solution to this issue, but it involves asking another question first, and that question is…  

Who should head the efficiency team? 

Evidence thus far suggests that schools in which a group of teachers are pulled together to chip in with ideas on efficiency tend not to be very productive when it comes to an end result.   They might have ideas, but generally speaking they don’t lead to the sort of efficiencies that the secretary of state is looking for.

This is not to suggest teachers don’t have the ability to make efficiency savings, but rather to suggest that they don’t have the background and daily experience that allows them to see efficiency possibilities. Instead I believe that once should look at the school office as a source of inspiration in this matter.  The school office has to liaise with all parts of the school. 

The school office has a wide range of options as to how it organises itself.   It also deals with school finances. Now you might say, hang on, the office can’t take on any more, and that’s a fair point. 

But if efficiency planning works, you end up taking on less, not more.  To help you begin to think yourself into this approach the School of Education Administration offers the Certificate in Educational Administration which is recognised by QCA.    

The course is taught through distance-learning so no time need be taken off work.  It lasts a year – but there is also a shorter course on Work Management and Administration, which lasts two months.

The next date for applications for the next intake on to the QCA validated, one year distance learning course is 1 February, closing date for applications 22 January.  The next intake for this two-month distance learning course (which is one module of the full National Certificate course) starts on 22 February 2010 – closing date for applications is 12 February.

An online prospectus is available at http://www.admin.org.uk/Prospectus.pdf   

To request a printed prospectus please send an email to samanthabates@hamilton-house.com or phone 01536 399 007.

For more information on the one year certificate course please visit http://www.admin.org.uk/certificate%20course.html   

For more information on the two month Work Management course please visit http://www.admin.org.uk/shortcourse.html

At the end of last year the government announced an efficiency programme which involved putting smart meters in schools.

 

I am very interested in getting some feedback from any school that has been approached about this.

 

All I need to know from you is that you have been offered some free equipment, and when the trial started or when it will start.  I would be really grateful if you could let me know if you have been contacted about this scheme.  Just email me at Tony@schools.co.uk

 

 

The Schools Minister in England Vernon Coaker has said that although school surplus balances have fallen for the first time since 2002-03 there are still schools holding back money that they should be spending.

 

Just over 7,000 schools have surpluses over the allowed limit and if these are carried forward into 2009/10 they are in serious danger of having the surplus clawed back.

 

The official statement says that, “While it is clearly sound financial management for schools to retain a small surplus from year to year, we expect revenue funding to be used to support the education and well-being of pupils in school now. It is however important that schools spend their funds wisely while ensuring best value for money.”

 

In the first official statement about claw back in this financial year the Minister said, “Local authorities have the power to claw back excess, uncommitted surpluses and redistribute the proceeds back to local schools in consultation with Schools Forums. To help, schools now have three year budgets to enable them to plan ahead on a much more certain and predictable basis, leading to improved financial management and better outcomes for pupils.

 

“Last year we made it clear that we expect schools and local authorities to work to reduce the level of balances by the end of 2010-11. If we do not see a substantial reduction of total revenue balances and in particular the excessive balances held by individual schools, the Government will consider further action from 2011-12 to bring the total down to ensure the funding is being spent on improving outcomes for children and young people.

 

“Although the number of schools with deficit balances has risen slightly by 153 to 1,848 schools on the previous financial year, it remains below the number of schools in deficit a decade ago. In addition, around 50% of these deficit balances were under £25,000. We’ve made it clear that where a school is in deficit, it must agree a recovery plan with the local authority to eliminate the deficit, normally over three years.”

 

The figures released show:

• Surplus balances in 2008-09 are down by around £118 million to £1.92 billion on the previous financial year.

 

• Excess surplus balances above the cut off point have fallen by £97 million to £495 million, and a record low number of schools (a little over 7,000) have an excessive surplus.

 

• As expected given the current financial climate, the number of schools with deficit balances has risen slightly by 153 to 1,848 schools on the previous financial year. However, it remains below the number of schools in deficit a decade ago.

 

• Around 50% of the deficit balances in 2008-09 were under £25,000.

 

Each individual school is responsible for their own financial management. They can often go into deficit or have a surplus due to individual circumstances like an increase or fall in pupil numbers – or similarly in staffing numbers.

There is a range of support available which schools should use to help them make the right financial and investment decisions, including:

The published data can be found at: http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/rsgateway/. A copy of the Written Ministerial Statement can be found online at: http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/pns/newslist.cgi .

Securing Our Future – Using Our Resources Well, sets out four main areas which finances in the schools sector could be run more efficiently:

 

Greater value for money from sharper procurement, collective buying and better use of technology;

 

Greater efficiency through the wider adoption of partnerships and shared services between schools;

 

Stronger strategic financial planning – including through greater use of School Business Managers and more effective financial management skills;

 

More effective use of external advice, already available, in strengthening financial management – and setting out a clear future role for central and local government and expert School Improvement Partners in supporting frontline delivery.

 

The discussion document is published at: http://publications.dcsf.gov.uk/default.aspx?PageFunction=productdetails&PageMode=publications&ProductId=DCSF-01097-2009&

 

If anyone has any thoughts on this, please do let me know.  I am trying to develop a School of Ed Admin answer - in case that helps!

 

Our school is improving and our Head Teacher is “challenging” his leadership team to look at each of our areas of responsibility to research what outstanding ‘looks like’. For those on the teaching side, this would appear to be a relatively straight forward. As for the areas falling under the remit of an SBM, it’s potentially not so easy (with a wide variety of completely different disciplines involved).

 

I like the challenge, although I am not sure that finding a school which is “outstanding in all areas of Administration” is a simple task. It would be good to visit any such organisation, to see if I can crystallise exactly how an outstandingly well run school looks/works and particularly, how the management of that operation constantly manages to strive for improvement in all areas.

 

It would appear to me that if we are committed professionals, this ‘should’ be what we all aspire to ultimately.

Please email any thoughts to Tony@schools.co.uk 

Tony Attwood
School of Educational Administration

Recently the School of Education Administration circulated a news item to subscribers to its news service which dealt with the way laws on criminal vetting were being interpreted in schools.

The response the SEA gained was very varied, ranging from comments that it was the practice to vet everyone, including parents and visitors, to schools where the statement was “we would never vet parents.”

It became very clear from this that the interpretation of the laws has become extremely varied, and it is just possible that the new set of changes being introduced can help regularize matters in England.

The schools secretary in England, has bowed to pressure from some quarters (but obviously not from others) to announce that the full vetting and barring scheme, due to come into force this coming summer, will now be changed. 

That policy would have made the actions of schools who force parents who take children to sports events to be checked.  Now that is being scrapped and new amendments to the law will be introduced.

In the new version a person working with children will have to undergo vetting if he or she has contact with the same group of under 16s at least once a week.  So now school visitors such as those brought in to give talks, famous ex-pupils, local footballers, theatre companies, school photographers and the like who might pop in just occasionally do not have to be vetted.

Further, 16 to 18-year-olds who help out will not be required to register. Nor will  overseas visitors who bring groups of children to the UK, unless they stay for more than three months.

And in a big clarification, parents who make any form of private arrangements with each other’s children will not be required to register. 

This will disrupt the activities of Ofsted who managed to ban a policewoman from looking after her colleague’s daughter because she was not a registered childminder.

The Independent Safeguarding Authority was created in 2006 and came into being this year.  People who are employed will have to pay £64 to register; volunteers can register for free. 

When vetting people, the ISA will use records of convictions and other information held by the police, including unproven allegations.   Everyone who passes will receive a registration number which lasts until withdrawn because new evidence comes to light.  The ISA is duty bound to monitor every registered person all the time and seek new information on them.

You can read more about the work of the School of Educational Administration and the courses we run for school administrators at www.admin.org.uk 

 

One of the more repetitive and tiresome duties of any school’s IT staff is the resetting of student and staff passwords. And as password policies become more complex, so the volume of passwords resets increases. Industry analysts estimate that around 70% of requests to the helpdesk are password related.

Today’s educational environment has an increasing “on-line” flavour, with both pupils and staff needing network access not just during school hours, but also remotely during evenings, at weekends and during the holidays – times when it is not normally possible to reset forgotten passwords or unlock accounts.

Self Service Reset Password Management (SSRPM) from Tools4ever offers a simple solution to these issues by allowing students and staff to reset their own passwords by successfully answering a number of challenge questions.

SSRPM

Is simple to deploy
Integrates fully with the school’s existing password complexity rules
Supports multiple VLEs for remote password resetting
Can be configured differently for pupils and staff
Works with XP, Vista and Windows 7
Frees up valuable IT support resources
For more information on SSRPM, just click on the link below:

www.passwordreset.co.uk

Alwyne Sinclair
Tools4ever UK
Office: 01452 384870
Mobile: 07912 843281
www.tools4ever.com

The School of Education Administration warmly applauds the development of UK Education News, and is encouraging school IT Departments to put  permanent links to the news service on the school web sites.

 

It seems as if a growing number of schools have now following this idea and are putting links to the service on their sites, so that administrators, bursars, members of the PTA and governors as well as teachers and managers, can keep up to speed on developments in the world of schooling.

 

The SEA would like to encourage every school to follow this idea and have a permanent link on its web site and/or learning platform.

 

There’s more information on the School of Education Administration and its courses at www.admin.org.uk 

 

 

The simplest way to save half an hour a day

All schools suffer from an influx of unwanted email aimed at teachers. Most are rubbish, but the problem is that one in every 50 or so emails can be of relevance.

To overcome this problem the School of Educational Administration has set up a system whereby we invite organisations that have a legitimate reason to mail teachers to use our system which directs email straight to the personal email address of the relevant teacher.

We give two absolute guarantees with this:

a) We will only forward one email per week to this individual
b) We will never, ever, release these email addresses to anyone else.

So far around 4000 schools have signed up to this service, and it means that it saves administrators hours of time each week.

The system is totally voluntary. All you have to do is invite your colleagues to go to http://tinyurl.com/yk2pvu7 and tick one box. We don’t ask for your school name, details or anything else.

At the moment we are only running this service for headteachers, deputy heads, Year 1 teachers and Year 6 teachers. If the experiment is a success we’ll extend this to all teachers in the school. Remember teachers can give us either their internal school address or their home email address – as they wish.

Last point: every email carries an “unsubscribe” button, so if the teacher doesn’t like what he/she gets, the service can be stopped at a moment’s notice.

I do hope you will find this experiment helps you, and that you can work with us to help make it grow.

If you want to know more about our work, there are details on www.admin.org.uk

Tony Attwood
School of Educational Administration.

It seems that Manor Community College in Cambridge which has 350 pupils aged 11 to 16, has become one of the first schools that states that anyone visiting the school will have to be accompanied unless they can produce a CRB check.The principal, Ben Slade, said signs have been put up around the school.  The signs read,  ”We do not allow anybody who is not fully CRB checked to enter the college premises or to work unsupervised.  This includes volunteers, visitors and contractors.  If you do not have a CRB (full disclosure) or you do not know what this is, please ensure that you contact a member of staff for further information.”

Apparently the rules do not apply to parents, who sign in as usual at reception, even though the signs seem to contradict that exception..

Mr Slade said: “It’s not saying people aren’t welcome into the reception, it’s just saying they can’t wander round the main body of the building unaccompanied without a CRB check.

“We had a safeguarding review which suggested we should make it clear to people who are entering the building they are not to walk around unsupervised or work with children if they haven’t been CRB checked.

“You don’t need a CRB check to enter the reception or go to an adult education class, and it doesn’t mean people are not welcome to come into the school.

“But you need to catch people’s attention. Taking risks on safeguarding children is not something I’m prepared to compromise on.

“Ofsted makes the rules up, not me, and a lot of schools have failed their inspections for not safeguarding pupils.”

The details of the signs emerged after parents escorting children from nearby Somersham Primary School to a carol service were asked to undergo CRB checks.  More than 20 parents who had volunteered to walk pupils 500 metres down the road to nearby St John’s Church were affected.

Details of this story appeared in the weekly newsletter sent to school administrators by the School of Educational Administration.   You can sign up to the newsletter at www.schools.co.uk/subscribe

The School of Educational Administration is doing research into what happens in administration when schools amalgamate

The SEA was contacted by a school administrator who raised an interesting issue in this regard.

It relates to the amalgamation of two schools, with the resultant moving of two sets of administration into one office, and a resultant redundancy. In this case one of the two schools is a special needs school, the other not.

The SEA is collecting data on amalgamations and what happens to admin staff, and if you would like to share any thoughts on this – thoughts which might be about positive outcomes, and maybe thoughts about things that one should look out for and avoid.

Sources of information are never revealed by the SEA.

If you would like to contribute information please write to Tony@schools.co.uk

There is more information on the School of Educational Administration and the free services it offers please visit www.admin.org.uk