The Institute of School Business Leadership has always defended initiatives aimed at improving practice. In particular, we have played a central role in the school resource management adviser programme.
We welcomed the opportunity to see school business professionals deployed as system leaders in a similar capacity to National Leaders of Education and National Leaders of Governance. Our aim, however, has never been to support reckless cost-cutting objectives.
Neither, I would argue, is that the aim of senior officials presiding over this initiative, and to be fair to Baroness Barran, the minister responsible for this area of work. She has listened carefully to the objections and criticism some have levied at the programme.
Whilst there remains variability across the system in terms of the optimal approach to operations and resource management, the current financial situation leaves even the most efficient, innovative and well-structured schools (and trusts) highly exposed, disarmed, and unable to weather the financial crisis.
The government must act now to avoid irrecoverable damage to our education system.
If the government is not prepared to prioritise education in this week’s spending review, it will need to accept that the ambitions set out in the spring white paper are very unlikely to materialise.
The language of world-class teachers leading a world-class system feels like a faraway fantasy world
At best, even the most financially secure schools will struggle to maintain standards. There is a growing consensus across the entire sector that at current run rates and with unfunded additional cost pressures, most schools will be unable to balance budgets beyond 2023, and many trusts face the very real prospect of insolvency.
If you ask a school business leader to balance the budget, they will have no problem performing the task. If you reframe the request and ask them to balance the budget with no detriment to teaching provision or learning outcomes, then the task becomes far more challenging.
On behalf of the sector, I have set the Secretary of State a task of my own, and that is to balance the three areas of funding, expectation, and accountability.
If the fiscal environment means that schools will receive no additional funding, then inevitably this will lead to cuts in both provision and staff. After staff (typically 80% of budgets), the next area where schools might typically turn to make savings is premises and, in particular, utilities, but with the ongoing energy crisis, there are no savings to be had – indeed the opposite.
Even the most sophisticated approaches to procurement are only going to result in very marginal savings. Any savings that are made will only help schools just about keep their heads above water with no headroom for improvement or initiatives to close the attainment gap left by COVID.
If we accept all of this, then the only way the government can help the sector to weather the storm is to prioritise and recalibrate expectations in the way that school leaders are expected to do in their own settings.
It is completely unreasonable to hold schools to account against a set of ambitious (white paper) standards that were developed before the war in Ukraine began, the subsequent energy crisis took hold, and hyperinflation began to decimate school budgets.
The language of world-class teachers leading a world-class system and the quick eradication of the attainment gap between more privileged and the most disadvantaged pupils feels like a faraway fantasy world rather than the lynchpins of a white paper.
Depressingly, most schools are focused on their survival rather than the wonderful things they could do to improve children’s life chances if only they had the resources to do so.
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