Musings of an SBL

Sue Birchall, long-standing SBL, ponders the future of her role and reflects on the journey she has already been on as an SBL 

Read the full article below or on page 18 in our April magazine

I have recently been involving myself in research for various groups, particularly the DfE, and it got me thinking about my journey through my professional development. Now that I am of an age, I am often asked how long I will work for and, most recently, how long the profession would hold my interest.

I had to think about this long and hard because, as you know, being a school business professional involves many varied tasks which I have always loved and has never really bored me or left me feeling that I would leave. It is the variety that ensures that I am always looking at new things and being innovative in the workplace, and thus not getting complacent and stuck in my ways. This is one of the qualities that I believe makes a good SBP – not only the ability to multi-task to a high level but also to act as an influencer and champion for change.

When I look at the development of the profession since I joined it in the early noughties it is pretty unrecognisable when compared to my first post. I have seen the profession rise in importance in schools, and then academies, moving from merely operational to a much more strategic approach and a true profession. The influence that the ISBL (nee NASBM) has had, added to the hard work that many like myself have put in, has paid dividends and it is heartening to see how much has changed, for the better. 

Going back to my first musings, at the start of my journey I joined a small church school doing payroll for a few hours a week. Circumstance led to this becoming a greater role and, very early on, I recognised that this could be something that I could learn to love. Enrolling on the Certificate of School Business Management took me to training residential; the first I can clearly remember terrified me in its breadth and content – so much so that I brought it home and hid it in a cupboard for a few weeks!

Leave that with me…

Once brave enough to start the course I soon relished the study and took it on to the diploma and then a degree with Manchester Metropolitan. To this day I think it all taught me more about myself as a person and an SBP than it did about how to do the role. I learnt to think in a different way and take on board all that was going on around me and use this to inform my work. I can still remember my first role with the title ‘school business manager’. I was so proud. It was my first outing with ‘education speak’ and I used to write down all of the acronyms and go away and look them up. My favourite phrase was, ‘Leave that with me and I will come back to you’.

What this approach achieved was that I became partially self-taught, learning about my role as part of my own personal journey to learn about how schools and the education sector operate. It is an approach that I have maintained to this day – you can never know everything, but that doesn’t mean you can’t learn. When I carry out end point assessments for SBP apprenticeships it brings it all back to me, and how I enjoy seeing their journey and also learning from them. I love that the fact that there are so many people out there who are keen to drive the profession and would say to anyone, either current or aspiring, take time to learn the role and yourself in it, you will reap the rewards tenfold.

The SBP challenge continues and I am still keen to be a part of it whilst being aware that it is changing. The advent of multi academy trusts, and the different ways of working that this brings with it, is enforcing change on the profession. Maybe there will come a time when SBPs such as myself that have such a breadth of responsibility will no longer be required – perhaps that is the point at which I will ‘hang up my boots’ – but I am hoping that will not be for a while yet.