Customer Story: The Catholic High School 

Based close to the centre of Chester, The Catholic High School is a mixed comprehensive for 11-18 year-olds with one basic aim – to provide the best Catholic education for all.

Following an extensive consultation, the school voluntarily converted into an academy in March 2013 and became the founding member of the Chester Catholic Academies Partnership (CCAP).

In time, the academy hopes to welcome more local Catholic schools into this partnership to provide more inter-school support and generate more operational efficiencies.

The school uses its academy status to deviate from the National Curriculum as it prepares students for GCSE and A-Level. It achieved Specialist Science College status in 2003 and is particularly proud of the number of students that go on to study sciences, engineering, medicine and mathematics.

Stephen Gauller has a background in human resource management and is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development.

He came to the academy 12 years ago and leads on all things finance, HR, administration, facilities, ICT and health and safety at the academy. Drawing on experience from a 20-year career in industry, he also provides managerial, operational and high-level strategic support to the head teacher.

Following conversion to academy status in 2013, Stephen took on the role of company secretary to the CCAP, a limited company with a net worth of over £25M. When the school asked him to take on a non-teaching assistant headship, with a broadening role, he knew that something would have to change if he was going to get everything completed on time.

Stephen found that he was spending a lot of time assessing, forecasting and modelling the academy’s finances. Whenever a new model was needed, it could take two days to get everything prepared plus more time for communicating findings to the head teacher and governors. He identified this as an area where he could make big time savings and started searching for a technology solution that could help him be more efficient.

Stephen and the Catholic High School, Chester needed a solution that could boost efficiency and lead to better decision making. After speaking to school business managers and other education leaders in the area, he noticed that one company kept coming up.

Stephen was already familiar with Access Education having attended a workshop on the Wirral some years previously, and after further recommendations, Access Education became the obvious choice.

Ultimately though, it was the quality and compatibility of the software that ended up winning him over. He said: 

I think the thing that really sold Access Education Curriculum was that it integrated so well with the budgeting software. Before we had Access Education Budgets, all of the financial information was stored on spreadsheets and it was difficult if we had to use this information to inform decisions about the curriculum or staffing.

When inputs like student numbers or funding change, Access Education Budgets and Education Curriculum make it easy to measure the impact on staff loading, which makes it easier to make decisions about recruitment. 

It gives us a very active and accurate way of modelling changes and opportunities as they arise.

As well as making it easier to see the links between the planned curriculum and available resources, the software solution also allowed for closer collaboration between key stakeholders at the academy.

Stephen said:

Access Education Curriculum is great for reassuring the head teacher and governors. It takes a lot of the uncertainty out of decisions, so if an opportunity presents itself and the head wants to know if it can be delivered, all they have to do is look at what resources we have spare. There is no need for them to go diving into spreadsheets because all the relevant information is visible and digestible.

Stephen still lives a busy life. Between his ever-growing responsibilities at work, caring for two young children and his love of sport, he doesn’t get a lot of time to himself. But Access Education software does help.

He said: 

I would say that the software saves me between two and three days a month, which is really valuable. The academy’s leadership team is also able to make more effective decisions in less time.

If an opportunity ever presents itself while I’m in a meeting, and the head, or a governor asks what the costs will be, we can model them right there and then. It means that I don’t have to go away, produce a model and then reconvene everyone three days later. All we need to do is bring up a projector and everyone can see the impact of any changes in real-time.

The academy’s finances are in a robust position and last year, the academy achieved its best set of GCSE results ever. Stephen believes that this success is at least partially attributable to Access Education software.

You don’t get your best set of GCSE results by fluke. It takes a lot of planning and good decision making. Access Education software helped put us in the position to go out and achieve that and I think we’ll see even more improvement in years to come.

The quality of the school’s leadership was also recognised during a short Ofsted inspection in March 2016. In her report, Ofsted inspector

Dawn Platt said:

You and your leadership team have maintained the good quality of education provided by the school since the last inspection.

Effective monitoring across the school has ensured that you know the strengths and abilities of your staff. The leadership of teaching is good. Staff are appropriately supported with training that develops their teaching further.

Stephen has used the product for over 2 years and it still continues to provide the easiest route to managing the forecasting routines.