Not enough money for books, children shivering in classrooms as the heating gets switched off early, after-school clubs cancelled, staff needing to use food banks, dark mutterings of a three-day week. All set against a backdrop of inflationary rises that we’ve not seen for decades, the value of the pound plummeting and warnings from the IMF.

It’s all enough to make you want to pack up and go home. And yet.

We’re not about to be Pollyanna-ish about the country’s financial and economic predicament and we are not about to dismiss concerns that are very real, very serious and escalating daily. But it is worth taking a moment to pause before we get drawn into a collective spiral of catastrophising groupthink.

As leaders, we need to take a deep breath and make a conscious decision to shift that mindset. While completely understandable, it only serves to narrow our field of vision when we want to take in the challenges and then set our sights further out and focus on what we do best: problem solving. 

‘Warm havens’

Crises such as these lead so often lead to new, better ways of working.  

When we think about the difficulties our sector faces - and the realities of what individual schools are experiencing - they pale in significance to those of the families and communities we serve: do I put the heating on, or do I eat? What weekly essentials must be taken out of the shopping trolley? 

These are extraordinarily difficult decisions, and it’s our duty to do everything we can to insulate our children, our families and our staff from the desperate challenges that they are facing in their daily lives.

Our schools need to become, as the principal at Broadland High Ormiston Academy in Norfolk describes it, “warm havens” in every sense of the word - yes, places to come to where you can quite literally be warm, but also places that create psychological and emotional warmth, which nurture learning and in turn radiate out into our communities.

Because the truth is that, when we do widen and deepen our field of vision, we open ourselves up to a wider range of choices. This is arguably easier in larger academy trusts like ours. Our schools are not individually having to negotiate on energy costs, they’re not having to ask catering suppliers to desist from putting their prices up so they can continue to provide hot lunches for children.

Economies of scale

In times such as these, strong networks of schools like AET and Ormiston Academies Trust help their schools weather the storm and provide some degree of safe harbour. Realising economies of scale, which are a positive at the best of times, now becomes essential if we are to steer a course through these times.

They’ve meant that, over recent years, we’ve been able to look at trust-wide initiatives that deliver serious savings and a net positive for our schools. 

So AET, for instance, has set itself the challenge of eliminating supply cover costs. Each year, AET schools spend circa £1.8 million on supply costs. Not only is this a significant line item in our yearly financial planning, but also - and with the best will in the world - children rarely get the same high quality of education they would enjoy from their regular teacher or another member of school staff. 

AET schools have responded to the challenge with real energy and drive, with some, such as Bexleyheath Academy in South London, having already become zero-supply schools. Others are exploring models that involve a planned and tiered approach where trained cover supervisors are the first port of call, followed by senior leaders, and then teachers who are under timetable allocation. All our approaches maintain the “rarely cover” principle, and the wide use of Chromebooks and planned resources to improve consistency and reduce workload are also key.

Meanwhile, the huge increases in energy costs have made Ormiston think hard about how to do things differently. OAT has a history of investing in sustainable buildings with all our new builds being low energy, and we have increasingly installed solar panels. The trust’s carbon footprint is already one of the lowest in the sector and we aim to push further, challenging ourselves to achieve significant reductions in energy use. And there will be other big ideas out there that we should be sharing across the sector. 

School-led change 

Since Covid, a new era of collaboration has started to emerge in the education sector. There is a much greater sense of wanting to work together for the betterment of all schools. But we can’t do this in isolation from government. 

More government funding would, of course, be helpful and is much needed. But, with a new Spending Review unlikely, there are other things government can do too - things that don’t end up in the classic stand-off of “We need more money” versus “Well, you can’t have any more money”.

Simple things such as finalising School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB) recommendations earlier in the year, for instance, and for those decisions to cover more than one year will allow us all to plan better. While there will always be debate over the quantum of the increase and how it is to be funded, we can plan more effectively with adequate time. 

And lastly, this mindset with a wider horizon should take account of the role schools play in economic growth. The chancellor has said that he wants every government department to be a department of growth. Education and schools are still not viewed as key drivers for growth. And yet we are privileged to be the guardians of our most plentiful natural resource, spread right across the country: young talent.

Schools need to be seen to be a major economic driver - locally, yes, but nationally too. And the fastest way to supercharge that driver is by continuing to invest in our teachers and support staff. It’s easy to lose sight of the fact that this generation of teachers has access to the highest-quality free professional development like none that went before.

Compared with the training and development that we both had many years ago, it is light years ahead. Initial teacher training, the Early Career Framework, national professional qualifications - the suite of training and development all teachers can now access is something we need to celebrate and make best use of. 

Now more than ever, we need to invest in our profession, and it is essential that budgets for teacher and leader development are sustained in real terms. We need our teachers and school leaders to feel valued in responding to the calling that is teaching. Because without that, we simply won’t attract the talent we need to overcome the widening regional disparities and gaps between rich and poor across the country - and we will certainly find it harder to insulate our schools as the warm havens they need to be, in every sense of the word.

Rebecca Boomer-Clark is CEO of AET Schools; Nick Hudson is CEO of OAT