The publication of the Department for Education’s school resource management strategy last week brought a welcome focus on to school resources and highlighted the essential role of school business leaders and the skills they bring to the education sector. 

Support for school business leaders (SBLs) has been sorely lacking in recent times. After the overwhelming workloads and largely unrecognised efforts of SBLs in managing their schools through the pandemic, it is refreshing and correct that attention is now being drawn to the positive benefits that skilled and effective SBLs bring to their schools and academies. 

Developing school business leaders 

So, what to make of the strategy?

Well, as the founder of SBLConnect, an online, nationwide network of SBLs on social media, I regularly hear and see the need to invest in SBL development.

In a rapidly charging landscape, upskilling and regular development are essential and needed, particularly as we are an ageing profession keen to recruit new professionals into the sector.

As such, I welcome any and all offers of funded training (see page 10 of the strategy document) for aspiring and current SBLs through a wide variety of providers - such as free webinars on resource management and the highly regarded Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (CIPFA) Diploma in School Financial and Operational Leadership.

An increased focus on resource management in the NPQ leadership qualifications fills a much-needed skills gap for new and aspiring executive leaders with no previous financial background.

However, the strategy could have gone further in this area by laying the pathways to seek to attract core business skills into the education sector from the business world.

After all, recruitment and retention of SBLs will be a key factor in the successful delivery of the strategy.

Funding support for recruitment and supply cover

Secondly, I also welcome training for trust boards (see page 11) to shore up weaknesses and further embed the structures of the Academies Act.

We have learned much in recent years about how the system can be dysfunctional, and any move to level the playing field of trust and board competencies is essential and welcomed.

Support for recruitment and supply costs (see page 16) is also welcomed. Schools deplore the huge amounts of money they are forced to spend on covering staff absence and recruitment - money that has no impact on student outcomes whatsoever.

Similarly, support in the effective deployment of flexible-working practices (see page 12) can only be a positive step towards improving the wellbeing and retention of high-calibre staff in our schools. It is reassuring to see that the DfE acknowledges this and encourages greater flexibility to support the workforce.

Finally, I’m cautiously interested to hear more about the strategy as it relates to teaching assistants (see page 14), who are singled out as a specific focus.

If teaching assistants are to be deployed as tutors, we need to be very clear about the boundaries between qualified teachers and learning support staff. If the intention is to upskill new TAs to act in a tutoring capacity, we will also need a huge investment in core funding, so that schools can pay a fair and decent wage to attract applicants to the role.

Currently schools are struggling to recruit any TAs, let alone outstanding ones, given the appallingly low wages they are able to offer and the limit of only being paid for 39 weeks of the school year. 

Reservations about the strategy

However, for all the positives, there are inevitably reservations about the strategy - both on what was omitted and what was made implicit about the future direction of travel for schools and the professionals within them.

The strategy acknowledges that the integrated curriculum and financial planning (ICFP) model does not work for special schools and alternative provision (see page 11), yet it fails to address the issue that the core funding model is wholly and fundamentally inadequate for those settings.

The need here is to address the core issue of non-mainstream funding, rather than tinker with the metrics by which to measure it. 

Similarly, a desire to improve school estates management by involving yet more external experts (see page 19) does nothing to address the dismally inadequate state of schools’ capital funding and the lottery of the Condition Improvement Fund (CIF) bidding process.

Fund our buildings better and our buildings will be better. It really is as simple as that.

Uncertain future for some staff

Furthermore, the statement that “ultimately our ambition is that, in future years, all schools are part of an academy trust in an independent, sustainable school system” (page 7) appears to ring the death knell not only for the maintained sector but also for the role of the generalist school business leader in a maintained school setting.

The move to the promotion of chief financial officers’ and chief operating officers’ training and mentoring programmes leaves many school business professionals highly concerned about their future careers, their employability and their financial future. 

By definition, the number of CFO/COO roles in a centralised MAT structure means that there will be fewer top positions in the future landscape.

The replacement role of local finance or estates manager in a MAT-run school may well be needed, but it will be a considerable step down, both in terms of responsibility and reward, for a large number of existing school business leaders, if “realignment” is the expected mode of travel.

How that impacts on the plans to develop a highly skilled workforce is an unanswered question and one that is of considerable worry for many SBLs.

We are currently looking at the future pyramidic structure of resource management and wondering how the dramatic reduction in the number of high-functioning and senior SBLs equates to the DfE’s strategy to increase and support the skills in top-level resource management.  

Moving forward together 

Those reservations aside, there is much merit in many elements of the SRM strategy.

But the DfE will need to acknowledge the practical realities of where we are now, in order to move forward in partnership with the sector. There is enormous work to do to rebuild the relationship between the sector and the DfE.

Previous experiences of the SRMA strategy and the government’s own attempts at resource and contract management still carry the bitter aftertaste of Lord Agnew’s champagne and the acid reflux of suggestions of reducing school meal sizes to save money and the catastrophic, poisonous procurement exercise that was the Edenred fiasco. 

If the DfE truly has a desire to improve resource management in schools, the key to success will be to show trust and faith in the skills and the experience that already lie within the sector.

Paid consultancy is not the solution, and while the school resource management adviser (SRMA) programme seeks to recruit expertise from within the sector, in reality, most experienced practitioners are too busy in their own schools to be released to support others.

This leaves the path clear for non-practising consultants, who are, by nature, removed from the complex realities of school life, to pick up the healthy £400 a day SRMA fee.

A focus on “refreshing” the ISBL Professional Standards serves little purpose if the document continues to be unknown to the majority of school leaders.

The real solution to cementing competency and expertise pathways in the school business profession is the development of a clear national pay structure for SBLs, with equitable pay and appropriate leadership pay scales mapped to levels of responsibility. 

With this, and a minimum entry level into the profession, we stand a chance of creating a structure to support the ambitions of the strategy, with which trust boards and CEOs can engage.

Without an attached pay structure, the Professional Standards will once again gather dust on the shelves of the small handful of SBLs who use them.

If the DfE has a real desire to support multi-year financial planning, it must provide clear multi-year funding deals, along with clear direction on future salary, pension and NI costs. It is simply impossible to write an accurate or useful three-five year budget, when 80-plus per cent of your expenditure costs are unknown. 

Clarity required 

And finally, DfE, give us clarity.

Clarity of the your evidence base for policy direction. Clarity over your expectations of us and the metrics you will use by which to judge our success.

Clarity over who you consult with and whether or not they truly represent the profession, and clarity over how partnership with existing skilled school professionals will sit at the heart of the delivery of this strategy. 

We want to work alongside you as respected professionals. The starting point for success is not a baseline assumption that schools are inefficient and the professionals who work in them are all in need of significant development.

The wisdom of how to run schools effectively sits firmly within the expertise that is already within the system.

A culture of mutual trust, respect and the opportunity for all to take part in shaping the future of our schools is the only way by which to ensure that all our students really do experience equitable and accessible opportunities.

Hilary Goldsmith is a school business leader and the founder and CEO of SBLConnect