Leading support functions to drive school improvement

Seminar brief: Sometimes, school administration, premises and lunchtime staff are an afterthought to the core purpose of teaching and learning. However, effective leadership of school support functions can also have a measurable impact on outcomes for children and young people.

By embracing leadership and management theory when working with support functions we can drive staff development and formulate business cases for investment in these areas. In doing so, we can transform practice, and what happens in schools, all linked to supporting the delivery of quality first teaching. 

In this seminar Shirley Si Ahmed will explore: 

• The role of the school business professional in the senior leadership team.
• Investment in, and development of, school support functions.
• How to embed the work of support staff at the heart of the school.

Take home points:

• Investing in support functions – can you afford not to?
• Real examples of change strategies and their impact.
• Ideas and action planning that can be shared with senior leadership teams and governors. 

This session is for: School business professionals, senior leadership teams and governors

Speaker name/title: Shirley Si Ahmed, school business leader, Purley Oaks Primary School

About the speaker: Shirley Si Ahmed is the school business leader at Purley Oaks, a local authority maintained primary school in Croydon. She has been at the school since 2015 and from 2018 has supported other schools as their data protection officer. She is a governor at a secondary academy and mentors local school business professionals. Shirley previously led the local authority traded service to schools’ function and worked in the school improvement 14-19 team. Before working in education, Shirley worked in sales and marketing for food and drink manufacturers working with global brands including Pepsi, Robinson’s, Nescafe, KitKat and Hovis.