Two million pounds is a lot of money if you’re a school that hasn’t got any. It’s a lot less if you’re holding the pot for the whole of education in the UK, of course, so I’ve been interested to read more about the Department for Education’s new school resource-management strategy scheme, and how that pot of money will be spent. 

As I understand it, the DfE has £2.3m to fund a project in which it will pay a tendered accreditation and training-delivery body (presumably already operating in the education sector) £152,000 to recruit school resource-management advisers or SRMAs (already operating in the education sector) to go into schools (in the education sector) to find and make additional financial savings through better procurement, contract renegotiation and curriculum-led financial planning. These savings will then allow the schools to operate within the confines of their reduced ed-sector funding, or so goes the theory. 

I have some reservations.

The entire scheme is based on knowledge and skills that already exist within schools. Fundamentally, it is a scheme based on collaboration between school leaders deploying their skills to support other schools which, for whatever reason, don’t have access to the same level of expertise. Sound familiar? That’s because it’s the “teaching school” model in another guise - only this time it’s a form that creams off a big chunk of money to an accrediting body, and which also pays the SRMAs a tidy £400 daily rate. That £400 per day over 190 school days equates to an equivalent salary of £76,000 a year. That’s not insignificant, but I can see why those able to deliver such a service might be the only ones applauding it.

Clunky and costly

I’m struggling to understand why the DfE has chosen this clunky, costly and admin-heavy model that’s reinventing the wheel. Teaching schools are already in existence and many are still receiving funding to support their growth. School business specialist leaders in education (SLEs) exist within those teaching schools and many are not being fully deployed. But they are, ironically, highly likely to be the same individuals that apply to become SRMAs, who will go into struggling schools with what sounds like a DfE hatchet licence to create savings that meet some preordained criteria. 

Would it not have been a better idea to use the local support networks of teaching schools, already in place and designed to support self-improvement, and use the £2.3m to provide a fund for schools to access free support from SLEs to work alongside or recruit to existing leadership teams? To identify financial efficiencies - that’s what school business SLEs do - but to also train those schools and their school leaders to improve their own financial management? Not only would this have achieved the same result in a far more supportive and cheaper way, but it would have served to strengthen the knowledge in the recipient school, thereby allowing ongoing self-improvement in their own local collaborative context.

I don’t buy the argument that the quality of teaching schools or their SLEs might lack consistency - I’ve seen no evidence, or even studies, that have concluded any lessening in the quality of the school business professional in the UK. In fact, the academies agenda has drawn a large influx of highly qualified financial experts into the sector from the business world. Where significant financial weaknesses have arisen, they have mostly been down to weaknesses at trust or board level.

Of course, there are schools with differing levels of financial expertise - there are schools with differing levels of everything - but the consultants, professionals and advisers who can support those schools already exist. Rebranding them with a DfE baseball cap and a larger pay cheque doesn’t seem to bring much to the party.

A business leader in every school

The DfE has stated on a number of occasions that every school should have access to a school business leader. For a while, it funded a number of nationally recognised courses that produced skilled professionals. But it then stated that schools were holding too much surplus cash; in fact, schools were financially over-effective, so it clawed back reserves and capped the prudent financial planning that those skilled professionals were implementing, foreseeing leaner times ahead.

When those leaner times arrived, proving such prudence necessary, the DfE changed tack somewhat and told schools they would have to live within their means, reducing school funding to the point at which schools are now struggling to operate, and school leaders have been forced to cut staff and essential services. For the past two years, the overwhelming voice from frontline leaders of education - the heads, governors, trade unions - has been that current education funding is insufficient.

But the DfE appears to be deaf to the voices of those most qualified to speak, and instead of listening to warnings of the education well running dry, it is intent on recruiting a team of hydrogeologists to filter out the very last dregs of moisture from the bottom of the pit. 

What has been the biggest cry of frustration from school leaders since the announcement of the SRMA scheme is that this intervention is not what they have been calling for. There can be few schools that haven’t had to closely review every single line in their budgets in recent years, scouring and combing to identify even the smallest possible saving. Today’s headteachers are, through necessity, more financially astute than ever before. Our crisis points are teacher recruitment and retention, the mental health of our young people and funding levels that do not accommodate inflationary factors. What we do not need to hear is that leaders, who have taken their schools through horrendous financial struggles to balance their budgets, need to take another look at their photocopying and energy contracts.

I don’t doubt that there are still savings to be made in some schools to make them as financially lean as they can be. I don’t doubt that the new SRMAs will be highly skilled and able to identify a host of savings for a number of the schools into which they are deployed. But what I do doubt is the ability of that lean, down-to-the-bone school, now held up to us as a supposed ideal, to create an environment in which children flourish, where the best teachers deliver the best learning experience, where minds and bodies are encouraged and nurtured, and young people leave our education system with a passion to learn, explore, create and thrive. Isn’t that why we’re all here? Is bare minimum what our education system and our young people deserve?

Of course it isn’t, but it appears to be all we will be able to deliver.

Hilary Goldsmith is director of finance and operations at a large secondary school. She tweets @sbl365