Extended services get business skills
Nancy Rowntree
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Extended services are set for a boost with the introduction of two types of school business managers in primary schools.
The National College for School Leadership (NCSL) has announced plans to develop the role of business managers from a non-teaching background who could save head teachers' time.
The drive to fulfil the extended schools core offer and develop more external partnerships has seen the role of head teachers grow significantly in recent years. Children's Secretary Ed Balls, who gave the NCSL the go ahead to develop the roles, said business managers would help schools join up with others to provide extended services. He added that it would mean procurement could be shared across groups of schools, saving time and money.
Advanced school business managers would work across small groups of primary schools and the higher-level school business director positions would operate in larger groups of schools to provide strategic business leadership.
Laurence Blackhall, chief executive of education charity ContinYou, said the proposal would help ensure the quality and sustainability of extended schools. "It will link the wealth of management and financial expertise that school business managers have into the sustainability of services within extended schools and clusters in the future," he said.
From early 2008 NCSL, working with the Department for Children, Schools and Families, will establish 24 demonstration projects across England to explore the potential of the two roles in primary schools.
David Sword, head of learning at West Sussex County Council, where one of the first pilots is due to take place, is keen to be involved because of the benefits to the extended schools agenda. "At the moment, managing extended schools across a group of schools is done on an ad hoc basis," he said. "Apart from the fact that this overstretches them, there isn't appropriate governance. We see this as a way to manage extended schools more effectively."
In Sheffield the demonstration project is being delivered by the Yewlands family of schools. Morag Somerville, school business manager at Monteney Primary School, said: "A business manager takes on a lot of the time-consuming tasks that head teachers have to do."
- www.ncsl.org.uk.
