School business leader Sally Boaden tells Leyla Tovey, of School Business Services, why SBLs need to band together to dig their schools out of the quagmire created by the pandemic
The pandemic has put school business leaders to the test, and they’ve shown exactly what they’re made of. The fact is that schools could not have got through this crisis without the school business professional.
Before COVID-19 the SBL was a little-known character to some members of the school community; a person who worked in the office who they didn’t have a direct connection with. That changed in 2020. Now the SBL is known throughout the staff body and wider school community. She or he is the person who led on the health and safety protocols that staff must follow to minimise the risk of infection; they’ve become the school’s guide through stormy times.
Sally Boaden, SBL at Lady Jane Grey Primary in Groby, Leicester, says that these experiences bode well for the future of the profession. “We can’t go back to how it was before the ‘event’ that we’ve all been wrestling with on a professional and personal level for so long,” she says. “Even if you hadn’t had a particularly close working relationship with your headteacher prior to last spring that will almost certainly have changed since. SBLs have been showing their resilience and ingenuity on a daily basis and that, thankfully, has been properly recognised.”
How do we sustain these gains? Nurturing our professional skills is one way, Sally says. “I’ve recently signed up to do a master’s in education leadership and management which has helped me to connect with a wider set of schools leaders. I’ve kept on top of my professional development qualifications over the 17 years since I entered this profession, and each one has brought new skills and fresh connections.”
Sally believes that forging links with other SBLs from across the profession is as important as qualifications. “This has become a major part of my professional development,” she says. “I use Twitter for networking, and I’m a keen participant in the SBL tea break (@SBLconnect), which gives us an opportunity to talk through the challenges that we face in our schools, sharing advice on what to do. I developed my school presentation on lateral flow tests using the tips and advice from this group – I then shared the presentation with members who I hope were able to save time by adapting it for their own schools.”
A tough twelve months
It’s been a tough 12 months, and it won’t get any easier any time soon, but Sally believes that we are beginning to see a few slivers of light breaking through the clouds. She has a set of clear priorities for the next year; the first is to support Lady Jane Grey Primary’s children to get back to something approaching a normal school life.
Another is addressing the additional costs of making the school as COVID-secure as possible and budget resurrection, making up the shortfall which were swept away by the pandemic through revenue-generating activities such as wraparound care, and lettings.
“Staying on top of the latest financial information for schools and academies is critical, so I make the most of all my connections, from my peers to trusted support companies such as School Business Services,” Sally says.
Spending time on self-care and development will also be critical, Sally adds. “If you’ve been feeling out on your own, I would urge you to find a friend,” she says. “We need to avoid isolation now more than ever before; SBLs have talked about this for years and we are now really doing something about it.
“There are many experienced SBLs out there on social media who will be only too happy to be a sounding board. I’ve enjoyed mentoring new SBLs during the lockdown. One lady I’m working with has just begun an SBL role in a small rural school. Starting the job is a gruelling experience in normal times -during a pandemic it is doubly so. My advice to her, and others in the same situation, is to break down the to-do list, one chunk a time.”
Providing a helping hand to fellow professionals looks likely to be a personal development goal for Sally this year. “My ambitions are focused on working closely with my colleagues across the profession so that we can support each other and dig ourselves out of this mess together,” she says.
“If I can help people in a bad situation to see how they can change things for the better, then I will be playing a small but important part in our recovery.”
Be the first to comment