COMMENT In his seminar at EdExec Live, Rob Kelsall of the NAHT will be highlighting the increasingly wide variation in pay and conditions for school business managers, including the vastly differing pay structure

Rob Kelsall of the NAHT will be hosting a seminar which will look at the increasingly wide variation in pay and conditions for school business managers, including the vastly differing pay structure across different local authorities.

The coalition government axed the School Support Staff Negotiating Body, which was tasked with identifying a national framework for support staff (similar to that for teachers).

Many local authorities have implemented, or are in the process of implementing, their Single Status agreements along with new pay and grading structures. In a number of LAs, this is having a detrimental effect upon SBMs’ pay grades.

School business managers are the fastest growing section of the NAHT and the seminar will discuss and debate the campaign to gain collective bargaining rights within the National Joint Council and local authorities. The seminars focus – ‘How to fight for your rights’ – will certainly stimulate a lively debate for participants.

Rob Kelsall is a senior regional officer of the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) with over 15 years’ experience as a union campaigner and negotiator. He has a track record of achieving improved pay, conditions and career structures for staff within the education sector.

He will be speaking at EdExec Live at London’s Business Design Centre on 22 June. For more information, or to book, click here.

The education sector is going through the biggest shake up in generations. Less than two years ago, the original sponsored academy programme had delivered us a little over 200 academies in a 10 year period.

Since then, the new drive for autonomy and localism has seen the number of academies snowball (As of 1 April there were 1,776 and the numbers are climbing monthly).

With this new-found autonomy comes a huge responsibility. Budgets can now be the responsibility of individual schools if they are a standalone academy and it is down to those schools to squeeze every last drop of efficiency and value from those funds.

My team has helped support well over 60% of all converters on their (often daunting) journey from a school to an academy. Without a doubt, those that have positioned themselves best to succeed in the long term have taken collaboration and efficiency seriously.

Collaborating with other schools for anything from idea sharing to jointly owned services covering – for example, HR functions, finance teams, grounds staff and specialist teachers – gives schools the ability to drive, often considerable, efficiency savings and, in the case of shared specialist teachers, offering their pupils the kind of expert tuition in subjects they may never have been able to employ on their own.

One of the biggest fears of our primary schools is that these collaborative structures might take away their individual identity and ethos.

This is perhaps an explanation as to why only a little over three per cent of primary schools have converted to an academy whereas over 50% of secondary schools have converted or are in the process of converting. There are a number of formal and informal collaborative models that can be employed to share the level of support and resources needed whilst allowing for as much of the original identity of the school to be retained as is wished.

The finance function of a school is often an area that can provide significant savings in terms of efficiency. We are supporting schools to embrace new technology.

Banking on the internet and the use of BACS is not only efficient; it provides much more security than relying on batches of cheques to be sent out to suppliers. In addition, our schools that are moving towards being completely cashless are seeing a huge amount of time savings with no need to count cash and cheques and be in the office to collect the seemingly endless streams of envelopes with small amounts of funds for trips, books, uniforms to name but a few.

Taking cash out of schools can impact positively in other areas too; there are great examples where a removal of cash has reduced playground bullying. It also reduces the risk of cash being stolen from school or, where staff still delivers it, on the journey to the bank.

Whether schools are taking the academy route or not, there has never been more need for greater collaboration and efficiency.

Ian Buss and Lloyds TSB will be presenting a not-to-be missed series of clinics on financial issues in schools, including the risks and benefits of going cashless, at EdExec Live on 22 June.

Tickets for this all-day event cost just £86.99 and there are plenty of promotions and deals to choose from at http://edexeclive.eventbrite.co.uk/.

For more information, or to book your place at our reader event, EdExec Live on 22 June, click here.

COMMENT Schools are obliged to prevent all forms of bullying inside and outside the classroom walls. Yvonne Spencer, partner at leading education law firm Veale Wasbrough Vizards, explains how social media adds to the challenge

As bizarre as it may seem, the law requires schools to take reasonable steps to prevent all forms of bullying, including bullying that takes place outside school. At one time those critical of this burden might have said that the law requires schools to act as surrogate parents or social workers. With the rapid increase in young people’s use of social media, this perception has changed and most accept that schools have an important role to play in the detection and prevention of cyber bullying.

This is because the consequences of cyber bullying can be severe. At a time when many young people struggle to cope with the pressures of adolescence, cyber bullying can be responsible for negative effects on academic performance and self-confidence and sadly, as reported on an increasingly regular basis, can even lead to suicide. It is therefore a major safeguarding issue for schools.

What is cyber bullying and how can it be detected?

Cyber bullying is defined as the use of the internet, mobile phones and social networking sites deliberately to upset someone else. All bullying must be addressed by schools as part of their overall behaviour and disciplinary strategy.

Victims of cyber bullying often suffer in silence, frightened and humiliated by cyber-attacks. How can schools find out if cyber bullying is taking place? It is now possible to implement a system of continuous monitoring of the school’s name across all social media and online channels using a wide range of free monitoring tools available for download.

Google tracks real-time content as well as blogs and traditional media. There are a number of free tools available which can be used to monitor Twitter including Monitter, TweetDeck andTwitter search. Whilst privacy settings may restrict the search ofFacebook pages, it is possible to carry out a search of public posts. Socialmention.com provides an excellent snapshot of who is discussing your school in which online forum.

Internal management is important too. Schools are at the frontline in the battle with cyber bullies. Robust policies, clear communications with parents, pupils and staff and keeping up to date with developments will help schools to tackle the risks and benefits of living with technology.

In the cyber bullying workshop at EdExec Live on 22 June, I will explain how new provisions in the Education Act 2011 give schools the power to search electronic devices and to delete data where appropriate. This power must be exercised in accordance with guidance from the secretary of state. These changes require schools to review and amend their policies so that the school’s practices are up-to-date and legally compliant.

How can schools tackle cyber bullying?

Schools need to develop a range of strategies to beat cyber bullying. These could include:

• involving parents and pupils to build confidence that any complaint about bullying will be taken seriously

• an Acceptable Use policy setting out the framework for the use of ICT within the school making it clear that any abuse of electronic devices will be dealt with under the school’s disciplinary procedures and that sanctions may include confiscation of mobile phones, restriction of the use of computers in school and ultimately suspension or expulsion

• effective staff training.

Of course, new technology also brings significant benefits and schools must learn to manage the risks. Many schools now embrace new technology and social media as part of an overall communications strategy and taking the initiative in this way can put the school into a better position to deal with issues as they arise.

For example allocating responsibility for staying up to date with new platforms and software to a named member of staff can ensure that the senior management team and governors are made aware of technological changes.

To discuss any aspect of cyber bullying at your school, please contact Yvonne Spencer, partner at leading education law firm, Veale Wasbrough Vizards on 0117 314 54202 or atyspencer@vwv.co.uk.

Yvonne Spencer will be speaking at EdExec Live at London’s Business Design Centre on 22 June in a clinic on cyber bullying.

Tickets for this all-day event cost just £86.99 and there are plenty of promotions and deals to choose from at http://edexeclive.eventbrite.co.uk/.

For more information, or to book your place at our reader event, EdExec Live on 22 June, click here.

MIS consultant Ben Cooper gives a taster for what he will be speaking about at EdExec Live in June

IT is playing a bigger role in the daily life of a school – from interactive whiteboards to electronic registers.

Many schools and academies spend significant time and money choosing and implementing management information systems (MIS). Ultimately, the key to success with any MIS is to ensure it is used properly. From the outset, it is critical to ensure that any MIS is set up to provide an insight into a school’s performance, so that areas for improvement can be identified and any strengths can be better understood.

Our presentation at EdExec Live on 22 June will help school business managers, bursars, headteachers and governors to better understand the key benefits which the right MIS can bring. In particular, we will focus on how MIS can help improve school performance by providing key information such as better tracking attendance, analysing pupil and staff records and identifying ‘weak’ spots. For example, if attendance is an issue, it is vital that the MIS is focused on this to identify what is going wrong and whether a particular pupil, group of pupils, teacher or subject is causing the problem. In this way the root of the problem can be identified and addressed.

We will also cover financial software best practice. With many academic organisations moving to academy or trust status, or working as a free school, the need for pertinent financial information is more important than ever. There may be a need for different financial reports, for different audiences and it may also be necessary to report on restricted and non-restricted funds.

The latest financial systems can be set up to present information in a way that is meaningful to the audience for which it is intended. For example, reports can be provided online to offer ‘live’ information, or emailed on a scheduled basis to a pre-defined list of contacts automatically or as required. Most importantly the right financial software package will ensure that information is captured properly. That way accurate analysis can be undertaken to better understand the financial workings of the school or academy.

Speaker profile

Ben Cooper is software director at consultancy firm Recenseo, which helps organisations choose and implement new software solutions. It specialises in integrating new systems with legacy software, with particular emphasis on ensuring that organisations make better use of their software and IT investment.

He will be will be speaking at EdExec Live at London’s Business Design Centre on 22 June about how to make the most of your MIS.

Tickets for this all-day event cost just £86.99 and there are plenty of promotions and deals to choose from.

Valerie Thompson of the e-Learning Foundation explains why despite obvious merits of allowing pupils to bring their own device to school, some schools may hesitate

There is a growing enthusiasm in the ICT and education community for letting pupils bring their own devices into school. The idea has immediate attraction, particularly reducing the pressure on hard-hit school budgets. So if it’s such a great idea, why haven’t all schools immediately jumped on the band-wagon?

The answer is that it’s not as simple as it may seem. The issues to be resolved before the educational benefits are fully realised are manifold, and not without investment implications for schools.

They include digital inclusion, internet safety, digital literacy, network capability, risk, diversity of devices, health & safety, and compatibility with school infrastructure.

At EdExec Live on 22 June, these issues will be discussed and debated so that schools can make informed choices about whether, and how, to adopt this particular strategy.

There are other strategies that could also achieve the same ultimate objective, which is 1:1 access to a device so that pupils can participate in what was coined over 10 years ago as ‘Anytime Anywhere Learning’. It remains as relevant now as it was then. In many ways even more so as the quality and quantity of digital content has grown. But that growth has generated a growing source of disadvantage for young people who have poor access to technology, particularly at home.

About 10%, some 800,000 school age children, still cannot go online at home. These children are concentrated in the poorest families. In fact nearly 50% of children in the lowest income group (the bottom 10% of families) don’t have access to the internet at home. No wonder then that children on free school meals continue to generate tragically poor GSCE results. Closing this attainment gap is at the heart of the Pupil Premium fund, and my charity strongly urges schools to deploy some of this funding to ensure that each of their pupils has good access to a suitable computer device and can log onto the school VLE and the Internet at home.

Because whatever method a school adopts to encourage the use of technology across the curriculum, it has to be a method that benefits all pupils equally and does not create an even bigger divide between those that have, and those that don’t.

Valerie Thompson is chief executive of the e-Learning Foundation. She will be speaking at EdExec Live at London’s Business Design Centre on 22 June about the pros and cons of the bring your own device (BYOD) trend to schools.

Future First have received a £250,000 grant from the Cabinet Office and a part-matching grant from the foundation Zing to fund free piloting of a new service in 500 schools across England

The service will support schools in collecting data from young people before they leave, on an opt-in basis. Through regular text, Facebook and email communication, it will then keep former students updated on developments at the school, and the school updated on their progress. By engaging alumni with their former schools, they will develop a network able to:

- Provide relatable role models to inspire, inform and mentor current students;

- Develop networks that can provide access to work shadowing and work experience opportunities during students’ time at school;

- Open up fundraising opportunities for schools to engage their alumni as donors supporting extra-curricular activities and more.

Working closely with our partner schools, Future First researches and tracks the school’s communities to identify former students now in a range of different careers, and then brings these former students back into the classroom in facilitated sessions as part of a curriculum of in-school activities for Years 7 to 13.

Future First Networks is a new service that will help state schools to build alumni communities by collecting the contact details of all school-leavers at 16, 17 or 18 years old and keeping them connected to their schools in the years after they leave.

Alex Shapland-Howes, MD of Future First, who will be speaking at Edexec Live in June about how state schools can build alumni networks, said: “We’d like to thank all of our supporters who have helped us grow to this stage; it’s an unbelievably exciting time for us all.”

For more information about Future First click here

Sure – it’s one thing to be able track and total your receipts and expenses for the fiscal year, but quite another to proceed to aggregate those receipts by month – for the last five years, and by department.

And while you’re perfectly prepared to figure your average staff salary and perhaps even break those data out by department, calculating the distribution of those salaries by salary band is something else again. Want to assign a rank number to your most income-productive months in the past three years – without re-sorting the data? Hmmm…

Not to worry. With Excel’s pivot tables – the paradigmatic off-the-shelf means for aggregating data into instructive patterns that might otherwise have swooned beneath the radar – it’s all doable in seconds, along with a good deal more.

Seen by some Excel users as forbidding and off-puttingly complex, pivot tables are prepared to unlock their secrets with just a bit of a rethink about how spreadsheet data are compiled and presented – and for business managers doing battle with their data all day long, the rethink is well worth it.

And because a pivot table always leaves its source data intact you needn’t fret about messing one up – just redesign or even delete it, and give it another go. And once you’re satisfied with your table, an accompanying chart is just a few mouse clicks away.

This taster workshop aims to describe what’s pivotal about pivot tables by highlighting their basic assumptions, pointing up their protean capabilities, and taking attendees through a simple pivot table construction.

Editor of Data and Innovation at Thomson/Reuters, Reginald Chua describes pivot tables as the “secret sauce” of Excel. What better way to sauté all the beans you’ve been counting than with this piquant, potent tool?

Abbott Katz will be running a workshop on Excel at EdExec Live on 22 June with particular reference to pivot tables, a tool that affords the business manager or bursar a most potent tool for aggregating information and data patterns that might otherwise remain obscure, adding value to the analysis of institutional financial activity.

He is a New York-born educational consultant living in London. He has written two books on Excel (Apress), has trained the application at numerous corporate and classroom venues, and has a doctorate in sociology from the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

EdExec Live is a day-long event taking place on 22 June at London’s Business Design Centre. Tickets cost £84.99 and include the above workshop, alongside dozens of others that will help school business managers, headteachers, ICT managers and governors improve their leadership skills.

For more information, or for the latest deals on tickets, click here.

There are plenty of events out there for education leaders – many of them good, a lot of them really great. Having been along to a fair few of them ourselves, what we at Education Executive felt was missing from the conference circuit was an independent event specifically aimed at bursars and school business managers, with focus and drive that would leave delegates feeling like they really learned something – no fluff, no puff and no unnecessary yawn-inducing speakers.

So we took it into our own hands to launch EdExec Live. Taking place for the first time on Friday, 22 June 2012 from 9am to 5pm at London’s Business Design Centre (also the magazine’s headquarters), we hope to present a day-long event that is exactly what it says on the tin: a live version of our magazine – in other words chock full of case studies, valuable information and inspiration for school business managers, specifically.

As has always been our ethos with our print and online offering, being bang up to date and responsive to your audience, and what’s current to the sector has always been one of our strengths. You can’t lead from the front if you’ve planned 12 months ahead! But we can confirm broad topics that will be covered.

So, while it’s still early days and we’re working to confirm all the details, what we can confirm is we are determined to bring you a day’s worth of valuable seminars, clinics and talks from leaders in the business of running schools.

Visitors will be presented with tangible information that they can take home and actually use to their advantage back at work – think of it like a mini, day-long MBA for SBMs.

Sign up now!