The response to the recent #SBLTwitter campaign to get established and emerging school business leaders joining a national online conversation has been amazing. There are notifications of new SBLs joining up and joining in on a daily, sometimes hourly, basis. I say “campaign” flippantly - that’s the wrong word. It’s more of a movement, an emergence, a sense that there’s an opportunity to be seized that might give the voice of the school business community not only a seat around the highest tables, but a real chance to become a cohesive force for change.

I, and many others, can feel a definite shift in the industry. Part of this is, of course, an enforced change brought about by the eruptive nature of the educational landscape. New types of school leadership structures are springing up as SATs, MATs, partnerships and alliances shake off their primordial ooze and start to take on new, solid forms.

Survival of the fittest 

It’s been seven years since the first post-Academies Act lifeforms slid out of the swamp; some of those phenotypic variations did not survive the natural selection process, some perished as they grew too quickly, some too slowly, others were eaten up by bigger, more powerful beasts and became part of the food chain themselves. Others chose to push against, or play fast and loose with, the rules of the jungle and found themselves publicly and humiliatingly shut down for breaches of legal or financial probity. But those with the most heritable traits, those most able to adapt and change, have now stabilised sufficiently enough to be able to take their place in the new order.

What we have now, or so it seems, is an evolutionary hiatus, brought about by a combination of environmental factors; funding cuts, a workforce shortage, a wellbeing crisis, and a general sense of industry-wide disenfranchisement with the current political agendas that are being played out.

And as we are halted, financially, from developing and thriving, with only the Kendal mint cake of resources with which to survive, so are we, in our various forms, having to look to other tribes, other breeds within our species with whom to share habitations, watering holes and hunting grounds.

‘The time to collaborate has arrived’

The need to collaborate is compelling; the time to collaborate has arrived. We have already seen how the larger and mid-range MATs have established variations on a theme of back-office efficiencies, with centralised admin and finance functions ranging from a slickly-branded corporate roll-out service, to a lady with a large shopping bag full of paperwork, scurrying frantically between two school sites, trying to do the work of three administrators.

Back in 2011, when my school-at-the-time converted into a MAT, the rules and structures around academy conversion were emergent at best. The legal guidance and financial practices were hastily stapled together by savvy legal and audit firms keen to grasp the lucrative emerging market, but the instruction manual of how to operate an academy was virtually non-existent. I clearly remember phoning a friend at a neighbouring school who was also converting and deciding between us how to carry out the TUPE and consultation process. Now, of course, there are protocols, policies and a plethora of companies who will, for a chunky fee, do all the messy stuff for you. But at the time, we made it up. And making it up became commonplace. School leaders, the majority of whom gained their management experience through traditional teaching routes, became system leaders overnight, with minimal business experience.

And you may have thought that this should have been the obvious time for the school business leader to emerge triumphant, taking their rightful and equal place at the boardroom table, but, whilst some SBLs did indeed do just this, the majority, instead, found themselves not on the board, but servicing it. Advising, reporting and being accountable to, but never quite making it on to. The role of the SBL is still relatively new in educational terms, and it may be that the education establishment was not quite ready to accept non-teachers into its upper echelons at that time. Particularly at a time when a number of those SBLs had been promoted into school business roles from relatively junior finance and admin manager positions. Had the government agenda to put a school business professional in every school started 10 years earlier, the situation would have doubtless been very different, but the profession was not quite strong or established enough to make that big step. But now things are very different indeed.

New roles of FD, COO and DOps have emerged to fill the skills gaps in the head and regional offices of growing MATs. School business SLEs are growing in number, and the lines between back office and boardroom are blurring sufficiently to allow for some real crossover. The old teacher/non-teacher divide still exists and will continue to do so for some time, but those 20th-century dinosaurs are reducing in number and influence, and are being replaced by creative and equitable leaders able to appreciate and actively seek out the skills required to effectively lead tomorrow’s educational delivery.

The school business voice

So it has come about, with the not inconsequential rise of social media, that we are in a place where the SBL voice is now being welcomed, and where platforms like Twitter have enabled a growing number of the SBL community to take part in wider educational debate. And this has happened because SBLs are barging their way into those conversations and earning respect for their contributions.

There are still a number who take a traditional view that SBMs are essentially glorified admin managers, who should be thankful for their place on SLT, but this is changing. It’s a long journey but the drip-feed work that we are doing is having an effect. This time last year there were only a handful of SBLs on Twitter, now national conversations are taking place, with growing numbers joining in. Confidence in and within the profession is growing. There are still huge issues for SBLs in schools - workload, unreasonable expectations, lack of parity, but those are ongoing battles. 

The educational spotlight is currently shining on funding, recruitment, wellbeing and governance, all key SBL areas of expertise. So what better time for the SBL professional to bravely step into the spotlight and to be a lead voice in highlighting, and crucially, finding solutions to, those issues? Collaboration, consultation and consolidation, at local and national levels, will bring forth the solutions, or the changes needed to bring about those solutions, and the collective voice of the SBL community could be a powerful force indeed.

I’m tempted to play a chorus or two of something rousing at this point, to close off what has turned into something of a clarion call to arms, but it seems that the SBL twitterati, in their wisdom,  have opted for Tubthumping as our anthem of choice. So in the wise words of Chumbawumba, “He drinks a whisky drink, he drinks a vodka drink. He drinks a lager drink, he drinks a cider drink.”

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