SEA1. The School attendance efficiency project

Observation suggests that different schools organise their administrations in different ways, and that some approaches can make a significant difference to the effectiveness and efficiency of the school’s work.

This report looks at the difficulties some administrators have reported in dealing with issues arising from attendance registers - and looks at putting in place processes that inevitably lead to a smoother throughput of information and activity. A more efficient system means that there are fewer disruptions, fewer errors, and ultimately more time for everything to be done. No extra funding or staffing is required.

SEA2. Cutting the office workload

A recent survey by the School of Educational Administration revealed that over 50% of schools do not carry basic information on their web sites, either because they have no web site, or because their web site is out of date.

Yet evidence suggests that where key information is shown on the web site this can significantly reduce the number of calls the school office gets from parents – thus reducing the number of interruptions to the work of administrators.

This approach is further enhanced by the www.schools.co.uk project through which parents can find details of each school in the UK, with a map showing how to get there, the school’s full address, and a link to its web site.

If you want to transform the way in which an organisation works then one of the simplest ways to do it is to consider the boundaries that control what individual people do. It can have the most enormous impact on the efficiency of the administration and management of a school.

This can of course be a highly controversial area – not least because many people simply slip into doing one aspect of the school’s work, or believe (for example) that “this is part of the work of the  deputy head.”

Yet where long-established boundaries can be broken down efficiencies certainly can follow, as members of staff take on jobs that are more appropriate to their position in the school, and which fit more easily with their other work.

SEA4. Raising administrator morale

It is self-evident that any employee who has a high level of morale will do a better job than an employee who has a low morale.   And yet despite this commonplace observation very few schools invest any time in raising and then maintaining the morale of their administrators.

Because of that many managers fail to recognise a decline in staff morale in the school office, and can be shocked when an administrator suddenly decides to leave.

Raising morale is not a complex task, and has nothing to do with issues of salary and very little to do with workspace.  Morale is dominated by totally different issues – all of which are under the control of the school management, and all of which can be tackled without any cost to the school.

SEA5. Delegation as a route to efficiency

It is agreed by most commentators that in all organisations one of the most obvious ways to improve efficiency is to ensure that managers delegate some of their work to colleagues in order to free themselves up to take on new projects and cope with an ever changing work environment.

Bu it is felt by some that the situation in schools offers fewer opportunities for delegations - and yet there are certain areas where this can be done.

This report looks at delegation in relation to education and shows how delegation can be implemented within the school in such a way that those involve welcome the rearrangement of work and the school benefits from enhanced efficiency without any additional cost.

SEA6. Shifting boundaries

This report looks at how schools organise the roles of their staff and, in particular, where the boundaries lie between the administrative group and the management group.

In many schools the division between management and administration is so profound (in terms of responsibility, working environment and position within the hierarchy) that the notion that work can be moved between the two sectors is seen as preposterous in some quarters.  And yet where it is achieved it can lead to significant improvements in the efficiency of the school and the way in which it operates, and greater job satisfaction all round.

SEA7. Perceptions of administration

This report looks at the impact that the way the role of the administrator in schools is defined by managers and teachers.   Such perceptions have a profound effect on the effectiveness of the management of the school, and changes in the perceptions (that have probably been in place for many years) can have a huge impact on the efficiency of the school.   The potential this has to be changed is enormous, and the changes can be effected easily and without any cost to the school.

SEA8. School administration - the five approaches

Every school adopts an approach to administration but few schools realise that their approach is just one of five possible approaches.  Some of these approaches offer very few benefits in terms of higher staff morale or the greater effectiveness of the way the school is run – and yet they have a self-perpetuating quality which allows them to continue unchallenged year after year.

Changing the approach to administration does take a little time, but the benefits can be overwhelming, and the cost very limited.

SEA9. Facilities management

Schools are heavy users of facilities and in many respsects the way in which facilities are used determines the way in which the school is able to function.  Yet the focus in schooling is rarely on the physical nature of the buildings or the equipment within them; rather the prime focus always remains on teachers.

By combining the focus on members of staff with the focus on the furniture, equipment and buildings that they use it is possible to achieve significant levels of school improvement and increases in the effectiveness and efficiency of the school without additional expenditure.

This article includes an introduction to facilities management in schools along with information on developing facilities for new schools, financial planning, issues relating to lighting and heating, security, and reactions to change within the field of facilities management.

SEA10. Leadership

In a school everyone is a leader.  It doesn’t matter whether you believe you are a leader or no, every adult in the school has a certain level of command over the children. The way we behave in school affects not only the situation we are involved in – it also influences any children who see or are affected by, our actions.

To be successful as a leader you need to have a good knowledge of the culture in which you are working.  You don’t have to be best mates with your team, but you have to have an understanding for their feelings.  In many regards this is quite obvious – if you don’t empathise with them it is very hard to find the right way to motivate them, and if you can’t motivate your team you can’t develop improvements and efficiencies.

Yet although it is obvious, by no means everyone achieves this empathy, which is why many leaders in schools fail to maximise the possibilities of their position.  This article deals with good leaders and failing leaders and explains exactly how a leader who is not making the most of his/her leadership can easily change and adopt a different approach.

SEA11. School budgeting

This report covers such topics as suitable arrangements for purchases which ensure control of finance without every purchase having to be validated by one person, a similar control of payment systems, to avoid suppliers having to chase payments where the purchase order has been lost within the school system (something that annoys suppliers and which wastes a lot of time in the school finance office), an analysis of opportunity cost, the Best Value approach, and Value for Money approach.

SEA12. Time Management

One of the most obvious signs of a job that is not well time managed is a work force which endlessly switches from one job to another.  Yet quite often when this is pointed out to school administrators, one is told that they actually like this constant switching: indeed some actually say that they do this job because it is always changing.  Others explain the constant changes through a reference to the nature of the job – that is to say that they have no way of avoiding the constant interruptions because that is the essence of the job.

However such regular changing of jobs, and such regular interruption, does mitigate against efficiency and effectiveness, for not only does the work process slow down, it is often hard to pick up the work again after an interruption, and it is during this post-interruption period that most errors happen.

This problem, and many other issues from time management, are considered in this report, and solutions for the school office put forward.

SEA14. Risk Assessment and the school office

T1744. Increasing the Efficiency of School Administration