Stephen Peach, assistant headteacher and business manager, Dacorum Education Support Centre, discusses how you can ensure that you’re allocating money effectively
In the service sector we’re not trying to save money; rather, I think, we should be seeking to spend it wisely. Saving money is easy – you just cut the service – but no-one’s going to be outstanding if you take that approach.
Schools are in the business of developing brains, changing behaviours and making people. We do this by having some staff who focus on the curriculum to develop our customers’ brains and thinking processes, while pastoral staff work on customers’ behaviours. Then, because schools can’t be trusted to get on with the job independently, there’s an organisation that checks on our progress every few years and, if they don’t like what they find, many people are going to be losing a lot of sleep and working under considerable stress until this organisation decrees your work to be ‘Good’.
But how does the SBM/SBL/whatever we’re called this week (WWCTW) measure the success of the investment made in developing brains and changing behaviours? Schools (depending on type) will typically spend 60-85% of their budgets on staff and, although significantly less in percentage terms, a lot of money is spent on resources and equipment – how is the SBM/SBL/ WWCTW meant to audit the use of this money to ensure it is being spent wisely, and not wasted?
Unless the headteacher is a control freak who likes to micromanage everyone by signing all orders personally (Why? Do they have such little trust in their staff to do their jobs even adequately?) SBMs/SBLs/WWCTWs typically send pieces of paper to heads of department each year, asking for a list of what they’d like to spend money on and how much it will all cost. There usually follows a period of email-tennis where the SBM/SBL/WWCTW questions the cost of various items on the list, and tries to get each budget reduced by 20-30% on the initial request before giving in, and dishing out the money. Some schools just use a funding formula – an amount per student, per taught hour and multiplied by the number of staff teaching each subject – and that’s how much each department is given, regardless of need.
Having been on the receiving end of this type of financial management for several years, it always struck me as creating a disconnect between teaching, learning and resourcing, because the pieces of paper always asked the wrong questions. They focused on resources and not the needs of the students; the size of the numbers and not the development of the staff. This struck me as being the very definition of wasting money, because these questions are trivial in comparison to the important stuff, like the needs of each department or the effectiveness of the leaders and staff.
Making a difference
Spending wisely is, I think, about organising the people involved to ensure that’s what’s spent makes a difference. What’s the point in allocating an amount of money to a department where the head isn’t very effective? Will those resources have the positive impact on the education and development of students as they would if given to a head of department who is at the top of their game? How does a SBM/SBL/WWCTW make judgements about the effectiveness of the people to whom we’re giving the money?
Firstly, I wouldn’t send out pieces of paper asking HoDs/HoFs/directors of Learning/WTCTWs how much they would like. The answers you receive won’t provide sufficient detail, or quantity of information, for SBMs/SBLs/WWCTWs to be able to make judgements about important information; that kind of invaluable knowledge can only be gained from conversations. I think a mechanism already exists for this in most schools, and it’s one that would be easy for SBMs/SBLs/WWCTWs to piggy-back onto. There is much less paperwork and far more assessment of impact through the discussion of knowledgeable people.
Most schools have some form of annual departmental review and action planning already baked into their management calendars. It’s a process where the headteacher ensures that each department is working towards the same goals as those laid down in the whole-school development plan. Do you not think it would be a good idea if each department made the costing of this process the major part of the budget discussions? Then, in 12 months’ time, there is a clear framework to enable the review of the progress of each department and the invested resources.
If the SBM/SBL/WWCTW becomes part of this key process in the life of the school they can gain an understanding about the effectiveness of each HoDs/HoFs/directors of Learning/WTCTWs. Each departmental action plan will be interrogated by teaching and learning experts and the job of the BM/BL/WWCTW is to ensure there are sufficient resources in place to make this happen – the very subject that is the expertise for most people in the profession.
Discussion stays tightly-focused and SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Timely) and, using this method, relieves the SBM/SBL/WWCTW of the requirement to make educational judgements. There’s a level of transparency and fairness that pieces of paper obscure – but, best of all, the SBM/SBL/WWCTW gets to be a part of the full educational development work of their school, using their expertise to literally ‘add value’ to the process of developing young people, a perfectly fitting jigsaw piece in the puzzle of school life.
This would enhance the standing of SBMs/SBLs/WWCTWs as they would no longer be seen as trying to implement something that they are perceived as having no professional knowledge of.
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