Leading from the back: The race towards academisation

With the government aiming for all schools to become academies by 2030, more of them are continuing to transform voluntarily.^[1] Some, though, are still unsure. The concern about the huge amount of work needed to transform a maintained school into an academy is sure to play heavily on the minds of staff, who are worried that it won’t be the best way to maximise resources.

Equally, the looming spectre of audits has a chilling effect itself. It has been said that, in the last few years, the workload of teachers in England is among the highest in the world, with the requirement to record up to 30 pieces of information per pupil for audits.^[2] The thought of having to do more of it, for more pupils, can certainly be unwelcome.

Schools – like most organisations that aren’t in the actual business of record keeping – can find their administration systems struggling to cope with frustrating regularity. Bulging folders, file boxes overflowing with tatty pieces of paper, and the regular hunt for missing invoices is an all-too-familiar situation for many.

Of course, they aren’t stuck in 1982: computer systems are used to store information. Yet, they usually hold duplicate copies of physical paperwork. Forms are printed out, filled in by hand and then scanned back in or filed, often in an imprecise order or location, which then makes the information difficult to collate.

Schools need a pressure relief

The pressure for other maintained schools to become academies within the next few years brings a golden opportunity to adopt a new way of managing their administrative processes – for all back office functions.

With modern technology available to automate processes that normally take hours or days, it can become much easier. This is something David Myatt, chief financial officer of the Deal Education Alliance for Learning Trust (DEALT), discovered when the MAT took on Access Finance, Budgeting and People software.

He said: “Before, we were reliant on outdated and clunky systems. It was hugely inefficient and made forward planning difficult. When we academised in April 2019 we had the option to implement something new.

“Back then, our annual audit took about 40 days and last year it was closer to 25. Next time around, having been using the Access system the full financial year, I’m anticipating that we’ll smash our 20 day target.

Of the trust’s HR processes, he added: “It’s already making a noticeable difference, having significantly cut down the time we spend processing data. By consolidating our HR processes into one system we now have full visibility of the entire trust, improving reporting and KPI analysis.”

By taking care of those important but time consuming and tedious clerical tasks, the software frees up those staff to be able to do their jobs more effectively. Not only that but, because teaching staff are able to see much more clearly and quickly what budgets they have available, they no longer have to go through the headteacher and the finance department, making it much easier to plan ahead.

Admissions are a bottleneck for staff time — but needn’t be

Technology can also alleviate the pain of the pupil admissions process, which is an arduous task for most schools.

Systems like My School Portal act as a convenient way to handle communication, record keeping and notifications between teachers and parents. However, from the school’s own perspective, one of their greatest benefits is in alleviating the pain for admissions. 

As Kerry Wilson, admissions registrar at Latymer Upper School said: “Previously, the team had to collate a pack of paper forms. This pack was then posted out to parents and had to be filled in at home, before being posted back to us.

“We then had to run through endless checklists, cross referencing which forms were still outstanding and which ones we had received.”

With the software now implemented, Kerry and her team are able to see immediately which of the online forms have been returned and which are outstanding, with the ability to send automated reminders to parents.

They now process around 200 admissions per day, with the software saving around 100 hours of their time over the whole process.

Growing MATs need consistent and easily-found information

This ability to find and view information easily is one of the greatest difficulties with traditional paper files or older computer systems. With human nature being what it is, and differences of opinion in how to organise documents, it can be difficult for many people to find what they’re looking for.

This is exacerbated many times for MATs when a new academy joins the trust. The complex process of onboarding a new school makes for a huge amount of administrative work – not only legal and financial, but to integrate the filing system for every function.

It’s certainly something that St Bartholomew’s CE Multi-Academy Trust knows well, as it rapidly expands. Its director of finance Christopher Dryer found technology could not just help, but be instrumental in ensuring that large amounts of new information could be inputted easily.

Commenting on the trust’s use of Access Finance and Budgeting software, he said: “Via the system we can import and export large amounts of data from Excel, helping to generate spreadsheets, new datasets and gain better oversight of how the trust is running.

“Centralised functions streamline many of the time-consuming tasks that were previously undertaken by each individual school, such as updating user profiles, adding new leisure codes or supplier details. The ability to do this via the central system has saved us the equivalent of a day a month in staff time.

“As we grow, relying on individual schools to undertake critical processes in a coordinated manner is simply unrealistic and drains time that could be better spent supporting teachers and pupils.”

Of course, technology evolves constantly. These systems, and those like them, will become even more efficient and powerful at servicing the needs of trusts. With more schools voluntarily choosing to academise, they’re able to take the opportunity of adopting it. And, by the example of their back-office operations, lead the sector.

 

^[1] Source: www.schoolsweek.co.uk/government-to-set-2030-target-for-all-schools-to-become-academies/

^[2] Source: www.theguardian.com/education/2018/nov/05/audit-culture-staff-burnout-england-schools-department-for-education