January is, typically, a time when we look to shave off some extra pounds of Christmas weight – but Stephen Mitchell, CEO Keystone Knowledge, has ideas on how you can also shave off the pounds to keep your budget looking healthy
We’re all recovering from the festive season, and we all know what that means. After indulging in mince pies, mulled wine, cheese and the other few thousand extra calories, we have all likely put on a few extra pounds that need shifting in the new year!
That perennial diet never gets any easier, does it? Nor does balancing the school budgets. It seems that, every year, we have to do the impossible and shave off a few (thousand) pounds whilst inflation, and what we want to provide for children, inevitably pushes budgets in the opposite direction. So, how can we keep the budgets looking healthy? Let’s take a look at a few quick tips.
Have an eye for detail. You can’t survive in this job if you don’t know your onions…or at least your key financial results. Cash is king and you need to be on top of what is happening with yours. Make sure your accounts are up-to-date, accurate and well-circulated. Share them around, talk to your SLT and other staff – but do so in a way that is relevant to them – which brings me on to…
Make your accounts relevant and easy to understand. The majority of our colleagues do not spend the day working with numbers, but we do need them to understand the financial implications of what they are doing, just as SBLs need to know how their job impacts on outcomes for children. Make your finances clear and relevant to those you want to know about the numbers. Give them a narrative, graphs or whatever else it takes to help them understand. That way, there’s a fighting chance of budgets being better managed.
Use ICFP and use it correctly. When implemented badly, ICFP can be a catastrophe. If you go boldly ahead, work out your metrics and then declare that spending needs to be cut in the areas that are in the red zone, you may be missing the point and, at best, will alienate people and be pigeonholed as the ‘person who doesn’t understand teaching because they do the finance’. Please, please, please don’t be one of those people. ICFP metrics only give you one thing, and that’s questions to ask. They can point you in the right direction to ask why something is the way it is, and that way lies enlightenment – a story about how your school has got to where it is, and clues to what the next steps should be. It could be that you need to be highly staffed because of the level of need in a particular class; it may be that your energy bills are high because your building is poor, or it could be an indicator that it’s time to review your energy supplier.
Review your contracts. It is easy for contracts to roll over and for us to be happy when there is a seemingly good relationship with a supplier – but how good is that relationship really if they could offer you a better price and haven’t been doing so? Testing the market is not a sign of distrust, it’s making sure that we’re getting value for money to ultimately benefit our children. Whilst I’m on this point, please consider the ethical behaviour of suppliers. There are many that give away free gifts to SBLs; bottles of gin, hampers and lots of personal treats that are clearly designed to change the way you think about them and their company. Please consider how others – parents, your boss, the ESFA – would view the acceptance of these gifts and whether they make it more likely that you will buy from that supplier in the future.
Use frameworks. Frameworks may not be suitable for everyone, all of the time, but they do provide a great starting point to access tendered pricing without the need to complete a full tender yourself. However, be warned that you can often get better prices or bespoke services suited to your needs by carrying out your own tender or procurement exercise; paying to use a specialist to broker a large tender for you can result in you saving tens of thousands of pounds.
Collaborate. One of the great things about education leaders is that we are generally happy to share. Work with colleagues in local schools to procure collaboratively; we all need similar things, and you may reduce your unit price by buying together.
Ask why. We often budget by taking last year’s budget and adding or taking off a few percent. There is something incredibly liberating and powerful in starting with a blank sheet of paper and asking what you need to deliver the curriculum you want.
Consider alternatives. You don’t need to buy a new class-set of laptops out of cash. It is possible to lease them over a three-year period, which reduces your annual cashflow and allows you to do more with the remainder. Look for different solutions.
The above are just a few ideas as to how we can shave off the pounds, ensure we are achieving best value for money, and help our budgets to look healthier, I hope they have provided some food for thought.
On that note, I’m off to the staff room to hunt down some biscuits…
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