An ongoing but essential educational challenge school system leaders face is how to improve standards and enhance attainment while simultaneously reducing costs. The ultimate priority for educators is creating an environment for students to achieve their best and realise their potential, but – especially in times of tighter funding – it is also crucial to do this in the most efficient way possible.
At the Thinking Schools Academy Trust (TSAT), we have developed and use a curriculum-based financial planning model which has been able to strike this balance. We have saved millions of pounds at our schools across Medway and Portsmouth, all while transforming standards and our students’ life chances over a short period of time.
Our model, which has been in place for three years, allows school leaders to make efficiencies by evaluating the existing staffing structure at a school and setting it against a curriculum map – which shows how many classes will be required for each subject across each year group. It gives leaders a birds’ eye view of the staffing resources required to deliver teaching effectively on the agreed pupil-to-teacher ratio.
The model enables accurate forecasting of staff for the next academic year. All our secondary schools sent us their curriculum maps and staffing structures at the end of 2017, allowing us the time to intervene well in advance, either to recruit a new teacher into a subject, or to stop a recruitment if not needed. If a member of staff in a particular subject leaves halfway through the year, we know immediately whether we need to hire a full-time replacement, or if makes more sense to take on a teacher on a fixed, short-term contract.
Our leadership of The Victory Academy over the last three years shows it is possible to combine rigorous financial planning and rapid educational transformation. When the school (previously named Bishop of Rochester Academy) was taken over by TSAT in September 2015, it had been issued a financial notice to improve, which was almost entirely down to a staffing structure that did not match its curriculum, and was rated ‘Requires Improvement’ by Ofsted.
Our curriculum-led financial planning model has been at the heart of our transformation of the school – reducing costs by more than £2m over the last three years, and revolutionising academic standards. The school is now rated ‘Good’, and in October’s provisional Progress 8 results (+0.44 for all pupils) it was ranked the best non-selective school in Medway, with only three Grammar schools ahead of it overall.