Schools can make resources go further by planning strategically and working together, says
Dugald Sandeman.
Over the last few months the debate about school efficiency has moved centre stage.
Securing greater value for money is an essential part of the job for all of us charged with spending public money and the effective use of resources in schools will be a particular priority in the next five years. In a tighter fiscal environment the use of resources needs to be scrutinised and schools, local authorities and the DCSF need to work together to find smarter ways of using resources to continue to secure better outcomes for children and young people.
That is why the discussion paper Securing our future — using our resources well is so important. It is not a consultation in the conventional sense. Rather it is designed to stimulate debate in the school system about how more effective approaches to resource management can support better outcomes and keep costs under tight control.
The deployment of resources is, rightly, a matter for those managing our schools, and is dependent on their long term planning and day-to-day management. But we can help schools and local authorities to find better solutions, and act as a catalyst for change. An example is the OPEN online procurement platform which DCSF has been developing in the last two years. OPEN creates an online market in which smart procurement is possible with very low transactional costs — better prices for much less effort.
There are a wide range of other opportunities for gaining greater efficiency which will be part of this discussion, but there is first a serious obstacle to seizing these opportunities, and it is cultural. In many schools, by no means all, looking for efficiencies is seen as a distraction from the day job, a diversion from the all-important focus on pupils and their outcomes. Superficially, this may appear right: the purpose of the school is to give pupils the best possible chance in life. The arguments though are not so simple or straight forward, because the success of pupils depends on the right mix of resources, human and material, being in place in every classroom, department and school. This requires effective resource planning and strong financial management. To achieve this the solution is effective delegation in a school workforce with the right mix of skills.
The idea of a senior management team supported by a skilled business manager and support staff is now the norm in a large secondary school, but the small primary school will often say it is not for them. That is why the National College has been promoting so strongly the model of the shared business manager. The current demonstration projects show lots of ways in which schools can benefit from the financial and organisational skills of a good business manager by sharing one. This leads to my second key issue: that schools collaborating, whether in federation or other ways, make it easier to find effective solutions to the challenge of resource management.
Schools facing the challenge of a tighter budget position from 2011 onwards need to be planning strategically now and reviewing their resources. For many the challenge is a new one after an era of steadily increasing resources. The most successful schools will be those who are planning ahead now; the least those who have to make reactive decisions at short notice at the end of 2010.
Doing all this on your own is a daunting task, but it is not a task that needs to be done in 23,000 sealed cells. Much better that schools should be helping each other, strongly supported by their Schools Forums and local authorities, with the DCSF providing support where it can do so. Centrally driven solutions are not appropriate but equally DCSF wants to support a national discussion and to help facilitate schools to secure the tools they need to support implementation.
The publication of Securing our future — using our resources well is intended to promote a national and local discussion and to foster solutions that work for schools and can be used widely across the system. We hope schools will regard this as a constructive framework for necessary action.
Dugald Sandeman is Director of the School Resources Group at the DCSF.
Next steps:
Securing our future — using our resources well is available at www.teachernet.gov.uk/
management/schoolfunding/schoolfinance/
letstalkresources/
publications.dcsf.gov.uk
