the school of
educational administration

• Cert Ed Admin course and Work Management & Admin course update.
• CELEBRATING SCHOOLS DAY: Showing the country what really goes on in school
• School Administrators’ Day 
• Every week administrators ask questions.  Would you like to see the answers? 
• The SEA “keep fit in just two minutes a day” programme for school administrators.
• Ensuring that we all do our bit for the environment. 
• The girl who invented spam
• An opportunity for an alert administrator to sort out a business that is in real trouble.
• The two national courses for school administrators
• We’re doing our bit for the environment, but we need your help
• The great thing about the SEA is that we aren’t limited in what we can do 
• The recycling issue – how different schools are solving the problem.

Cert Ed Admin course and Work Management & Admin course update.
                                                                                                           
A major part of the work of the School of Educational Administration has been the development of courses that focus on school effectiveness and school efficiency.   These courses are taught through distance learning methods, and are available throughout the UK, Channel Isles and Isle of Man.

The Certificate in Educational Administration is a one year course at level 3 (the same as A level) and is fully accredited by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA).

This accreditation comes in addition to the recognition given to the course by The Institute of Administrative Management which is responsible for ensuring that the course is of a high quality and is at an appropriate level.  As a result of this recognition all students on the one-year distance-learning course now automatically become student members of the IAM for the year of the course, and for a further one year thereafter.

The Council for Administration (CfA) has also confirmed that the Certificate in Educational Administration has been accepted as an Administration Technical Certificate for the Business and Administration Apprenticeship and Advanced Apprenticeships.

I would also add that the National College of School Leadership recognises that the Certificate in Educational Administration as a suitable preparation for its own Bursar Development Programme, subject to the normal entry requirements.

We also offer the Work Management and Administration course which lasts 2 months and consists of one of the modules from the full one-year course. 

There is more information on both courses at www.admin.org.uk, or you can read more in our prospectus which is available from Prospectus@admin.org.uk or by calling 01536 399 007.

The next intake for the one year course closes on June 23, while the final day for registering for the next intake of the two month Work Management course is on June 2.  I do hope you will be interested in our courses and will be joining the hundreds of administrators who have already taken our courses.   Tony@schools.co.uk

CELEBRATING SCHOOLS DAY: Showing the country what really goes on in school   

I was recently talking with colleagues about the way that every summer the media run a series of negative educational stories – often centred around the fact that standards in exams are falling, children are less able to read and so forth.

Such stories are, of course, all made up, and although ministers and others come out and defend schools the newspapers generally treat such ministerial comments as excuses.

So we came up with the idea of “Celebrating Schools Day” which will be held on 15 July 2008.   It is a day that allows schools that wish to join in to get some free positive publicity.

In the coming weeks the Celebrating Schools Day committee will be sending press releases to every local paper and radio station in the UK to tell them about the Day and inviting them to contact their local schools for stories of the year.

The idea is that if your school wants to join in, then a week or so ahead of the day you send a press release to your local paper and radio station commenting on some of the great things that have happened during the year in the school.

This can include anything that the school and the pupils or students value – such as special achievements by pupils, money raised for charity, expeditions, work in the community, and indeed the fun and celebration of the leavers’ ball and other such events.

If you have a person in the school who handles the school's PR and marketing you might like to invite him/her to subscribe to our news service that covers this sort of matter so they can stay in touch with information on the day.   This can be done through sending an email to PR@schools.co.uk with the word SUBSCRIBE in the subject line.  It is completely free.

There are more ideas and details about Celebrating Schools Day on the www.schoolspr.co.uk site. 

Celebrating Schools Day is being sponsored by Book-Builder, the company that publishes School Yearbooks.  They will be building a web site that allows pupils, under the guidance of teachers, to post their own positive memories and recollections of the year.   There is more about Book-Builder on www.yimple.com or by phoning 0845 388 9901.

School Administrators’ Day 

In the USA every year they have Administrative Professionals Week to celebrate the importance of administrators in business, in government and in schools.

I have known about this for several years, but it was only this year that I suddenly realised just how huge an event this is in the US.  Indeed it was in the 50 most searched for phrases on Google for several weeks in the USA.  In fact if you type in the phrase “Administrative Professionals Week” into Google you get over 750,000 findings of that exact phrase.

It has been running since 1952 (it was originally called Professional Secretaries Week) and clearly the week has had a huge impact on the positive way Americans think about administration.  So for the past few weeks I have been consulting with professional associations and others, and we have decided to bring the idea to the UK.

We have decided to learn from the American experience but in the UK we are going to focus exclusively on the school administrator.  We are aiming, through the School of Educational Administration, to run School Administrators’ Day – a day when we invite all parents, teachers, governors, managers, and pupils to celebrate the work school administrators do all year round.   It will of course take quite a bit of planning and organising, but I certainly believe this will be possible.  (My colleagues and I were recently involved in running another such day, and we got two slots on Breakfast TV, a Radio 4 programme, the World Service slot and lots of local coverage.)

We will need volunteers who are willing to talk to the media – and if you are interested in this do send me an email so I can keep you posted on all the latest developments.   There will be more news here, and on www.admin.org.uk – where you will also find a new section where administrators pose and answer questions about products and equipment used in schools.

Finally if you would like to receive a weekly email which allows you to pose questions and keep up to date with other issues in administration, just send an email to ed.admin@schools.co.uk and write the word SUBSCRIBE in the subject line.

Every week administrators ask questions.  Would you like to see the answers? 

Each week we get a lot of emails asking us questions.  Below are some recent examples.   If you would like to be part of the service that allows you to ask questions, and see all the answers, the details are at the end.  And it’s free.
We are an independent school and need to create a new admissions register.  Do you have any information on where we might be able to buy one or if any other schools would be able to provide a prompt response.
Rats - any ideas from rural schools on safe ways to reduce the population??
Anybody looked into whether electric hand driers are more economical than paper towels?? We seem to use up LOADS of paper towels, and the Governors need to be convinced that this is not the way to go.....
Do other schools use cleaning schedules for their cleaners to ensure that all areas in school are given a deep clean periodically?
What email system do the majority of schools use?  We are experiencing major problems at present with our email provider and wonder whether any schools use Google Mail.  If your school does use Google Mail what is your opinion of it?  What are the safety levels?
Can I ask how schools without a dedicated HR/Personnel function manage the ever increasing workload connected with Staff Recruitment & Retention, Staff Policies and Procedures and Employment Law etc especially from a Support Staff perspective.   
I would like to update our software to monitor school fund account and would like to ask other administrators which software they currently use and which they would recommend.
I would like to hear from anybody who has or is using the Tucasi School Cash Office and the Dinner Money Management software.  I have seen a demo and it looks fantastic, but before I go ahead I would like to have some feedback on this and other software.

The SEA “keep fit in just two minutes a day” programme for school administrators. 

Most administrators drive to school and don’t realise that this gives many chances for staying fit.  First, buy a fold-up bicycle, fold it up, and put it in your car (excellent stretching and reaching exercises). 

As you drive to work, watch out for people who have already unfolded their bikes and are passing you on the wrong side of the road, driving across red traffic lights and mounting the pavements and then using your car to kick off their next weave in and out of traffic.   At regular intervals hit the breaks firmly (reducing ankle fat), grip the wheel hard (loosening wrist tissue) shout vigorously at the cyclists (exercising vocal chords and getting the diaphragm going) and hit the horn (strengthening every muscle in the hand and arm).

As you approach the school, park about half a mile away.   Remove your fold-up bike from the car and attempt to put it together.   If you manage to do this, cycle to school, phone the manufacturer and tell them you are the first person ever to put a fold-up bike together.  If you fail, pick up the bits of the bike and throw them into the road with as much force as possible (thus exercising back and arm muscles, and raising your heart rate, which it is important to do each day).

Slam the car door with vigour and walk to school; carrying your case, laptop, lunch and anything else you can think of (for muscle toning).

On entering your office undertake a full review of all staff who are off work on maternity, paternity or study leave, or who are absent with nervous stress or are consulting their lawyers over health and safety in school issues.   This will re-stimulate your blood supply as you realise that once again you are the only person who turns up to work more than 3 days a week.

Now relax into your chair in the knowledge that you have improved your health and fitness, while those around you have not.   Then finally make a note to sign up for a course with the SEA that includes “dealing with stress”.  The final date for applying for the QCA validated one-year distance learning Certificate in Educational Administration course is May 6.  The two-month Work Management and Administration Course closes its next intake on 31 March.   Have a really jolly Easter, and thank you for reading.                                                                                                                                              Tony@schools.co.uk

Ensuring that we all do our bit for the environment. 

Every year the schools in the UK receive around £35 billion from public funds.  Around £26 billion is spent on salaries, but the rest is available to be spent on books, software, fuel, grass cutting, and everything else that schools want to buy.

Obviously it is important that different suppliers are considered for purchases to ensure that this public money is spent properly.  But that is where the problem starts.  Suppliers want to send people in your school leaflets and brochures describing their products.   Creating the leaflets uses resources, distributing the leaflets takes up your time – but without this process it is hard for school managers to keep up to date with new offers.   They can of course look supplies up on the internet, but such activity takes up much much more time – time which most teachers certainly say they cannot spare.

To overcome this problem we have set up two services.  One is a web site that gives links to hundreds of suppliers’ websites, each being classified by subject area.    The other is a series of email newsgroups which supply news and product information to teachers, managers and administrators.  

Of course these projects are new – and so they have not replaced the mail as yet – and indeed it is possible that they never will.  But these two initiatives have helped reduce the amount of mail reaching schools – our volume of paper mailing is down by around 30% this year.  

The School Procurement Site, which has links to hundreds of suppliers’ sites is at www.top5.org.uk   As a bonus it also now lists a growing number of companies that supply free products and services to schools.

The email news services are described in full on www.schools.co.uk - just look at the heading “Sign up for our free news services” in the middle section.  You might particularly like to note that one of the news services is for school administrators.  If you would like to join, just click on the link.

In the meanwhile I do hope you know how much I appreciate your work in distributing the leaflets that we regularly send you, on behalf of our clients, who by using our distribution services support the work of the School of Educational Administration.                      Tony@schools.co.uk

The girl who invented spam

Occasionally I interrupt the normal flow of information about the courses and services we run for administrators to bring you unexpected tales from the wilder side of schooling and later life.  Here is one such – if you find it too silly please turn it into a paper plane.  The main message is at the very end. 

Jilly McGraw was educated at Woffle Edge School in the Cotswolds where she met the future Viscountess Southcliffe (heir to the Daily Prod).  This unlikely couple regularly debated novel ways of annoying people, their favourite being the selling of products that either didn’t exist or which neither of them actually owned.   Although the idea progressed little during their school days neither girl forgot it, and in later years it served them well.

While Southcliffe moved into newspapers Jilly was faced with a somewhat restricted life after 3 years at the University of Certain Things.  Initially she set about defining herself as an economic misfit while working for ITV.   Later she toured the dance halls of the UK proclaiming that she was a jellyfish that had been washed ashore at Henley during the Regatta.  She was recruited into MI5, and for her cover story became Social Conservative Progress candidate for Slightly Cheaper, which she won with a landside majority in 1986.

Most of her work during this period involved writing obituaries about famous people who had not died, which were regularly published in the Telegraph. 
When her father’s estate was taken over by her half brother Sir Hubert Herby-Percy she invented email as a way of persecuting the family, selling much of their estate at knock down prices.

In 2002 she was granted the Lenin Humanitarian Prize for her work on helping oil widows in Nigeria export their late husbands’ funds, and was awarded the Inverted English Award for grammatically incorrect fake pharmaceutical advertisements.  The size and scope of her work can be seen by the fact that over 98% of all emails last year followed her style and approach, although all those from the SEA were incredibly serious and very helpful and I hope you read them.

The next Certificate in Educational Administration course contains no jokes: the final registration date is March 10.   Registration for the Educational Work Management & Administration course closes on March 31.   You can obtain a printed copy of the 2008 prospectus by calling 01536 399 007 or by emailing prospectus@admin.org.uk   I do hope you’ll take a look at the course – but meanwhile I hope the story slightly lightened the day.   Tony@schools.co.uk

An opportunity for an alert administrator to sort out a business that is in real trouble. 

Last month I decided to close my Nationwide Building Society account.  As it was a postal account I sent my pass book through the post.  They sent it back saying that although the account was originally a postal account, they had changed it without telling me and I now had to visit my local branch.

Frustrated but determined, and duly armed with various forms of identity I presented myself at my local branch and made my request.   They told me that they couldn’t close the account there – it had to go by post to head office – but they could give me some of my money and then they’d send the book off.

I said that was fine, and the staff started to process my request.   An hour later I was still waiting as none of the people in the branch were able to work out how to give me my money.   When I could wait no longer I made my excuses and went to leave.  At the door I noticed a sign saying that as a customer of Nationwide I was entitled to the highest standards of administration.  If they fell short of such standards they would appreciate it if I filled in a complaints form.

I returned and asked for the form.  Ten minutes later the manager had to admit she didn’t know where the complaints forms were and couldn’t give me one.

Back in the office I tried the Nationwide web site.  That told me that if I had a complaint, my first port of call was to phone head office.  This I did and after a wait of under half an hour I was able to put my complaint, only to be told that if I had a complaint I had to go to the branch.  A conversation followed.    

Three days later I went back to the branch, where I was given the bulk of my money, before sending the book away for the closure.   A week later I got the pass book back, without the final cheque, but with a note saying that they could not close the account because I needed to go to my branch so they could complete the security checks.  A further phone conversation ensued.   

A week later my money arrived, quickly followed by a letter from Nationwide.  It warned me that unscrupulous people might try to get me to reveal the details of my Nationwide account by asking me to undergo security checks which involved revealing my password etc.   The letter said, “telltale signs include spelling mistakes and poor grammar.”  It suggested I should always follow certain procedures, “to ensure neither you or us are compromised”.   

The two national courses for school administrators

The National Certificate in Educational Administration is a one-year, distance learning course for school administrators combining printed materials and an on-line virtual learning environment. It was developed by the School of Educational Administration, is recognised by QCA as a level 3 course, and is validated by the Institute of Administrative Management who are also the validating body for the National College for School Leadership's qualifications. 

All students on the course automatically become student members of the IAM and will be sent information about this with the course materials.

Although the course is partly vocational and will encourage students to evaluate their own working environment, it is not an NVQ. It includes learning materials to read through with links to interesting web pages or journals. It also includes mini tests so that students can test themselves, as well as projects where students take what they have learned and apply it to their workplace. It is very interactive and students both build on their reading and exchange ideas and information with colleagues in other schools.  You can read about the course at www.admin.org.uk  

Students generally find they spend three to four hours a week on the course through the year.  At the end of the course students receive a certificate from the Institute of Administrative Management. 

We are now recruiting students for the first intake of 2008. Closing date for applications is 28 January and the course begins on 4 February.

We are also now accepting students onto “The Certificate in Management Practice: Educational Work Management and Administration”.  This course consists of one module from the National Certificate in Educational Administration.   The next intake closes on 13 February 2008 and runs for two months.   Having completed this course you can then move on to take the rest of the full National Certificate course.

Over 60% of local authorities in the UK have now paid for administrators to take our courses.  Details of the costs can be found with further information on the course content on www.admin.org.uk

We’re doing our bit for the environment, but we need your help
                                                                                                           
The School of Educational Administrators is committed to taking steps to make schools more efficient, and to make reduce the impact that activities around schools have on the environment.  But we need your help.

Everyone clearly needs information on products and services when buying everything for the school from repairs to windows to new software – especially this term when so many schools have been given additional money to spend. 

When you or your colleagues are searching for products or services from companies please do take a look at The School Procurement Site at www.top5.org.uk    It has web links to hundreds of firms organised by subject and topic, and allows you to find suppliers very easily.

Also encourage everyone to sign up for our free news and information services which come via email.  Thousands of school administrators, teachers and managers now receive these regular bulletins – just go to The School Directory Site: www.schools.co.uk - and see the listing “sign up to our free news services”.

Also while you are on that site, please do check that the information we hold on your school on the Schools Directory is correct.  Tens of thousands of parents use the site every month – and this reduces the demand on prospectuses – another positive environmental saving. 

Of course there is still a need for printed information to be distributed – as with this pack.  But we are acting to minimise the environmental impact both by putting the materials together in one pack, and by making a donation to the Woodland Trust which is more than enough to plant and maintain a greater number of trees than are used in the production of the paper used within this package.  What’s more, all the energy we consume in our offices and warehouses comes from renewable sources such as wind power.  

One final thing this week – there is still time to sign up this term for one of the QCA recognised distance learning courses run by the School of Educational Administration.  Full details are on www.admin.org.uk.  Or for a printed copy of the prospectus please email prospectus@admin.org.uk or call 01536 399 007.

The great thing about the SEA is that we aren’t limited in what we can do 
           
The School of Education Administrators was set up with a very simple aim: to help everyone working in school administration.   This means that we have no restrictions on what we do and which projects we take on.   But it does mean that over the years we have tended to wander off into all sorts of areas of work – and as a result it is possible that we do things that could be helpful to you and your colleagues, but which your school does not know about.

To make it easier for you to keep an eye on each project we take on, we’ve changed the layout of the web site www.admin.org.uk so that you can see on the home page the key things that we are working on at the moment.  The site is updated regularly – but here’s a quick summary of a few current issues…

The next intake for the QCA validated one-year distance learning course “The National Certificate in Educational Administration” closes on 28 January.   The next intake for the two-month “Work Management and Administration Course”
closes on 13 February.  To request a printed prospectus for either course please phone 01536 399 007 or email prospectus@admin.org.uk

We now run several regular email newsletters – and obviously over time we want to expand this, and thus reduce the amount of paper sent to schools.  To receive our weekly email newsletter on issues concerning school administration send an email to ad.admin@schools.co.uk with the word SUBSCRIBE in the subject line. Details of our email newsletters to teachers and managers are given on the www.schools.co.uk web site.   This site also contains links to every school in the UK – and where possible the school’s web site.   You can check your entry by clicking on “Schools Directory” on the site.   There is a link in the top left box through which you can correct any errors.  Thousands of parents a day use this site, so it really is worth making sure your details are up to date.    

Finally (for the moment!) there’s the School Procurement Website which has been designed to save time when searching for suppliers of products and services.  We are about to expand this with a series of listings of materials provided free for schools.   The site grows every week – as well as using this yourself to find suppliers please do continue to encourage all your colleagues to use it: www.top5.org.uk.   And meanwhile, if you’ve got any ideas for other things we can do to help, just email me at the usual address:
Tony@schools.co.uk

The recycling issue – how different schools are solving the problem. 

Since last October schools have a legal obligation to recycle paper and card – and recently the SEA email news service organised the first ever school recycling survey to find out how this has affected schools.

In practical terms most schools have introduced separate containers for recyclable waste although a few schools still collect the waste into one container for it to be segregated at a recycling facility.

Not surprisingly many schools use their local authorities as recycling agents.  Some local authorities will take virtually everything, some are very choosy, some charge, some don't. In some places you can't get rid of cardboard, elsewhere the problem is shredded paper.   Several correspondents wrote along the lines that "we use the council, and I am sure this service is available everywhere".  But that is not the case - we found huge regional variations, and you can't assume that what you have found in your area applies anywhere else.

As the results of the survey came in I started to call a few councils to check on where they sent their waste and I found it surprisingly hard to get firm information as to what the councils did once the waste is collected.  The council recycling centres are mostly just collection points – I wanted to know where it went for the actual recycling took place.   The people I talked to were generally so vague I began to wonder if it wasn’t still ending up in landfill!

Most schools using private firms use companies that just cover just their local area.  It’s beyond my resources to draw up a directory of such firms, so I went searching for a national company – and here by far the most helpful company I contacted was BIFFA.   They have a service that is available in most parts of the country.  Obviously I can’t speak for what they do, but their ability to answer the phone and answer my questions was way ahead of most of the councils and the local area companies I spoke to.