What Can Your School Business Professional Do for You?

What can your school business professional do for you? The answer is no longer a simple one of just saving time and money. While these are obviously attractive benefits of the position for headteachers, the modern school business professional role goes further than this.

In schools and trusts today, the school business professional has a wide and varied range of responsibilities. From finance and procurement to HR, the role encompasses the need to demonstrate skills in many areas.

Many school business professionals are already members of the leadership team and fully involved in setting the school or academy’s strategic and financial direction, ensuring the best use of resources to improve outcomes for pupils.

We want to raise the status of the profession across the sector so that more schools and school leaders experience the benefit and value that a school business professional can add for their school.

One of the common frustrations for school business professionals is being brought in at the last moment and having to redirect resources just to balance the books and make the curriculum work, rather than take an integrated and more considered approach to financial planning.

We know that this can lead to school business professionals saying that they often feel professionally isolated in their roles and can lack the levers to bring about school-wide benefit. We want to help to change that.

In March this year, we published a series of case studies on GOV.UK, which shine a much-needed spotlight on the value a good school business professional can bring to a school or trust. Sam Eden, Headteacher at Ancaster C of E Primary School said:

“A good school business professional is crucial to the strategic running of my school. I would never go back to not having one.”

We all need to work together to ensure that this is the attitude of every headteacher and school leader: a proper recognition of the essential, beneficial role that an excellent school business professional can have.

The DfE will be joined by ASCL, NAHT, NGA and ISBL to discuss the importance of the school business professional in our schools and trusts.

The panel will discuss:

• How a school business professional can help school and trust leaders to use resources efficiently to improve educational outcomes for pupils
• The diversity and increasing complexity of the profession and the emergence of new types of roles
• What a school business professional can bring to a school or trust’s strategic development, operational efficiency, and leadership in order to achieve educational excellence

So, come and find out “what your school business professional can do for you” at 11am at The Hot Seat.