Category: Intelligent Operations

In line with Richmond and Wandsworth’s net zero targets, Smart School Services have launched the net zero decarbonisation framework to support schools in achieving their decarbonisation goals.

Please click here to find out more information on the school’s decarbonisation framework. The framework sets out information and guidelines on how schools can reduce their consumption and stay on track with their decarbonisation targets.

Within the decarbonisation framework you can find a list of funding streams that may be available to you, along with contact details for the relevant organisations.

If you require more support or have any queries, please get in touch with the Energy and Sustainability team on: energyandsustainability@richmondandwandsworth.gov.uk

This article is written by James West, a marketing consultant with a track record of working with education provides across the U.K. 

“Educational Waffle”

Let’s unpack the problem – “Educational Waffle”. It often feels like schools are duty bound to use the same limited pallet of stock phrases and statements with flimsy sentiment. This “waffle” – technical term – might feel like it conveys your values. However, just look at half dozen school prospectuses and you’ll soon understand how dizzying the effect of reading repeated promises of quality, aspiration and attainment makes you feel.

The issue here is at the heart of what causes parents’ problems and reduces the effectiveness of all marketing and communications (for enrolment, retention, and the overall perception of a school). The reason it happens is that it’s easier to write in educational waffle, it’s a familiar shorthand and common place – but none of these reasons should be excused. 

The problem that causes these symptoms is that not enough work has been done to understand the uniqueness of your school’s learning experience – the few specific aspects that separate your school from the others. When we work with education providers, they are often able to rattle off a list of 10+ features that make them ‘unique’ – that is, until we show them that nearly every other provider uses the same set or similar. This revelation of seeing themselves from the perspective of a parent, pupil or partner quite quickly reveals how samey their offer is perceived to be.

Why not have a look at a dozen websites of schools in your area – how many tangible distinctions can you spot in the ‘About’ sections? Try to avoid ‘reading between the lines’ and just go with what is said on the page.

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What can be done?

Understanding differentiator/s is the core of what is needed to unlock your communications and make your unique school learning experience stand proud. 

STEP #1

To start, we recommend two things:

1. Listen to your parents, pupils, partners, and staff 
   (Ask them what they think about the school, what specifics they really value, why they decided to enrol, work or partner with your school).
   
2. Write a long list of features and ask yourselves ‘Which are unique to us?’
   (If at first you don’t get any, keep going – push yourself to look for specific aspects that could be unique or closer to unique)
   

Remember we’re looking for things that make you unique. From our studies of educational websites, the following should cause alarm bells if they are featuring on your features list:

STEP #2

Once you’ve found your differentiator or a set of possible differentiators, we encourage schools to use something like Geoff Moore’s Value Proposition to start articulating the benefits.

Example:

FOR parents living in Roehampton

WHO are worried about their child’s transition to school

OUR induction series IS the ideal first step

THAT gives parents and pupils time to make the adjustment.

STEP #3

The final step is still very much the start of the process. As soon as you think you’ve found a differentiator, start using it. At this stage you want to test to see how it is received – By using it in a newsletter is a different action received? Did we get more enquiries from putting it on the front of a marketing flyer? When I say it out loud to parents, is their reaction affirmative?

So much of marketing and communications is like writing a recipe for a cake. You need to tweak the ingredients until you find the right balance – the aim of this work is to get going and start to see if you can find the perfect recipe for marketing the benefits of your learning experience. 

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James and his company West Creative are working in partnership with Smart School Services to help support schools with their marketing and communication activity. If you would like to discuss your school and this service, please complete the Head to Head form below and we’ll be in touch.

Employers are legally required to provide information, instruction, training and supervision necessary to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health and safety at work of their employees and safeguard the pupils. Agnieszka Wojcik 

When is H&S training required? 

H&S training is required upon:

• Induction – Provided for new employees to help them to settle into the new workplace environment and activities. 
• Exposure to new or increased risks
• Existing skills may have become rusty or outdated
• When current training requires refreshing 

How will your employees and school benefit from H&S Training?

Providing health & safety information and training will help you to:

• Meet your legal duty to protect the health & safety of your employees.
• Contribute towards making your employees competent in health & safety;
• Ensure you or your employees are not injured or made ill by the work they do;
• Develop a positive health & safety culture, where safe & healthy working becomes second nature to everyone;
• Find out how you could manage health and safety better;
• Can help your school avoid the implications that accidents and ill health cause;
• Can help you avoid the financial costs of accidents & occupational ill health.

H&S training methods available 

• There are many school health and safety training options available, including:
• Classroom Offsite
• On-site at the school (school)
• Online 
• Blended Learning 

In school, the following training are examples of H&S training needed (the list is not exhaustive) 

Staff whose work involves a greater element of risk will need extra or specific training.

A record of H&S training should be kept up to date, with details of who in your school has completed which training course, which staff are trained sufficiently and whether their certificates are still current.

Steps to achieving compliance in H&S training 

• Review staff H&S training needs upon induction
• Organize necessary training 
• Keep an up-to-date record of who has completed H&S training and when
• Carry out regular reviews and monitoring of dates to book training refreshers
• Ascertain that training expectations are met by carrying out staff supervision and assessing training after delivery with staff

When to renew H&S training 

As a general guide, unless otherwise stated in the training certificate, refresher training should be undertaken every 3 years.

Our Health & Safety Team provides training that can be tailored to the school needs and delivered on site.

The UK Health and Safety Legislation outlines basic requirements for creating a safe work environment and actions to be taken to reduce to risks to staff, pupils, contractors and visitors.

What should be in place?

Every workplace should provide welfare facilities and a working environment that’s healthy and safe for everyone in the workplace, including those with disabilities.

The workplace must have:

• welfare facilities – the right number of toilets and washbasins, drinking water and having somewhere to rest and eat meals
• a healthy working environment – a clean workplace with a reasonable working temperature, good ventilation, suitable lighting and the right amount of space and seating
• a safe workplace – well-maintained equipment, with no obstructions in floors and traffic routes, and windows that can be easily opened and cleaned
• fire safety measures – each building should have suitable fire safety precautions and a clear emergency evacuation procedure for all occupants including those with disabilities

What to do if there is a problem? 

If the right facilities are not provided in your workplace, staff should raise this with their manager or staff representative. If appropriate action is not taken you should contact Smart School Services by booking a Head to Head meeting.

What is PPM? 

Planned Preventive Maintenance (PPM) is regular and routinely performed maintenance on physical assets, to reduce the chances of potentially serious and expensive equipment failure and unplanned equipment downtime. 

It is to manage and extend the lifecycle of equipment, but is also a compliance requirement to satisfy statutory and legal obligations. The work should be scheduled in advance and can range from weekly to annually, depending on equipment and risk.

Failure to deliver compliance can result in service delivery failures, which whilst not as severe as legal failures, it can impact on the operation of your facilities, your core business and cause reputational damage.

Why is preventive maintenance important?

It is important because it keeps equipment and assets running efficiently, and it maintains a high safety level, which helps to avoid large and costly repairs, as well as service downtime. 

A properly functioning preventive maintenance program ensures operational disruptions are kept to a minimum.

Specific examples of preventive maintenance include regular inspections of your heating, ventilation or air conditioning systems (HVAC) ensuring they are properly cleaned and repaired and that your water hygiene and electrical systems are also functioning within safety and compliance levels.

How can Facilities Management help?

We can provide the relevant PPM services through our experienced contractors that will deliver a professional planned maintenance function across your school portfolio.

Here are just a few examples of PPM services available to you through Facilities Management:

• Boiler servicing
• Lift servicing & repairs 
• Electrical Fixed Wire Testing
• Mansafe systems
• Legionella Risk Assessments
• Water Hygiene inspections
• Flushing of infrequent used Water
• Water Temp. monitoring
• Fire Detection & alarm servicing 
• Fire Extinguisher servicing 
• PAT Testing services
• Commercial Kitchen equipment servicing
• Air Con Servicing

Facilities Management (FM) are now offering our services for your Planned Maintenance 2022/2023 Compliance requirements.  To order and buy into this service, you can order or request a quote, before the end of March 2022, via the Smart School services portal.

If your school chooses not to use the Council FM service, you are still required to upload your certification documents to the councils Concerto CAFM system.

There has never been a time in recent memory where so many critical decisions around school operations have had to be made with such short notice. 

Now is the time to take stock and breathe. But it is also the time to evaluate and embrace new, smarter ways of doing things.

That begins with designing intelligent operations that seamlessly handle systems, management and contracts – creating genuine partnerships between schools and outstanding suppliers, while freeing school leaders to spend more time focusing on school life.

Smarter Buying

In procuring a wide range of goods and services in often complex marketplaces, schools can face higher costs than they need to, spending money which could be better spent on providing high quality teaching and achieving better educational outcomes for their pupils. We need to help schools overcome these procurement challenges. 

The rising costs of materials, resource shortages and driver shortfalls hindering the supply chain are just some of the macro issues presently affecting non-staff expenditure. Schools do not typically have specialist procurement skills available in-house. This can make efficiency savings to help manage these ongoing financial pressures, while continuing to improve standards for their pupils, difficult for schools. 

In the future, we need to think differently about the way we approach procurement. Supporting schools to look locally, developing a sharing economy across school network or creating strong relationships directly with suppliers can realise tangible cost savings. From catering services to site cleaning, schools need to re-evalute the way in which they contract suppliers to ensure they are getting the smartest value for money. 

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There has never been a time in recent memory where so many critical decisions around school operations have had to be made with such short notice. 

Now is the time to take stock and breathe. But it is also the time to evaluate and embrace new, smarter ways of doing things.

That begins with designing intelligent operations that seamlessly handle systems, management and contracts – creating genuine partnerships between schools and outstanding suppliers, while freeing school leaders to spend more time focusing on school life.

A Head for Business 

How do you manage a school through a pandemic? The extra burden of responsibility and risk that comes with Covid: making decisions about safety; bereavements; weekly new school policy announcements from the government; e-learning; providing support, reassurance and answers to staff, students and parents. Now add to that, the usual tasks associated with running a school. 

Headteachers have been under an enormous amount of pressure. Reacting to an acute problem has meant that portions of their structured planning and spend have had to be reassigned to ‘fight fires’. In some instances, this has led to a budget deficit with the unpleasant choices and cuts that inevitably come with it. 

The need for business model innovation is increasingly evident as expenditure comes under increased pressure. Effectively addressing the financial management needed to meet the needs of facilities, payroll, health and safety and emergency planning is key to each school’s future financial health. There is a growing recognition that education is not just a public service, it’s a business. If we get it right, schools can alleviate pressure on key staff while still providing the best possible education. And that makes sound business sense.

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There has never been a time in recent memory where so many critical decisions around school operations have had to be made with such short notice. 

Now is the time to take stock and breathe. But it is also the time to evaluate and embrace new, smarter ways of doing things.

That begins with designing intelligent operations that seamlessly handle systems, management and contracts – creating genuine partnerships between schools and outstanding suppliers, while freeing school leaders to spend more time focusing on school life.

Digital Acceleration

The pandemic accelerated digital transformation across the education sector. Enforced remote learning had a profound impact on pupils, teachers and schools, with the significant increase of e-learning, with teaching undertaken remotely and on digital platforms. 

While there is certainly no substitute for a great teacher, technology can be an effective tool to help reduce workload, increase efficiencies, engage students and communities, and provide tools to support excellent teaching and raise student attainment. 

As we strive to realise a tech-enabled future where the learning experience is enhanced for all, there are key issues that need to be addressed. A technology action plan needs to be put in place – ensuring teaching staff are given the correct support and training, the systems built are secure from attack, cost-effective cloud resources are implemented effectively and the best-in-class hardware and software is procured. 

Technology gives us the opportunity to reshape the way we teach, monitor, budget and assess all of our activities. But it is crucial that the actions we implement are far-reaching, sustainable and safe.

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Making staff aware of health and safety issues can be a chore. Many people can’t spare the time to read safety information in their normal busy day and spare time can be scarce. There are many essential pieces of information which staff must know to work safely to protect themselves, colleagues and pupils.

Placing posters – safety posters can be an excellent tool for emphasizing key safety messages. Placement is vital. Most staff do not have time to stand around, but short messages can be displayed in key places of high traffic areas like bathrooms, breakrooms and near entrances or exit to staff areas. 

• Simple graphics and short text information placed behind a toilet door allows staff to see the information when they are less distracted. 
• Another unique way to attract attention is to place all or part of a poster upside down as it may intrigue staff to stop and read the information. Remember to rotate and move information so it doesn’t fade into the background.

Staff briefings – it can be helpful to include a key safety message in regular team meetings or email communications and memos.

Induction – Health and Safety Induction is essential for each employee and it is important that staff have access to information to remind them of the health and safety requirements in the workplace. Providing a health and safety booklet or links to health and safety policies online, will mean your staff can review the information again and again.

Celebrate safety – there are many documented national and international safety and health awareness dates which could be recognised by your teams and pupils throughout the year, to keep health and safety at the forefront of minds. Some examples below;

• World Safety and Health Day – 28^th April 2022
• Sun Awareness Week – 6^th-13^th May 2022
• National Mental Health – 13^th-20^th May 2022
• World Mental Health Day – 10^th October 2022
• Back Care Awareness Week – 5^th-9^th October 2022
• National Stress Awareness Day – 4^th November 2021
  

Risk Assessment

What is risk assessment?

Risk assessment is the process of evaluating risks to employees’ health and safety from workplace hazards. It is a systematic examination of all aspects of work that considers:

• what could cause injury or harm;
• whether the hazards could be eliminated and, if not;
• what preventive or protective measures are, or should be, in place to control the risks.

Who should carry out risk assessments?

Anyone can carry out risk assessments if they have the knowledge to do so. It is often beneficial to attend a training session to ensure the risk assessment is being carried out correctly and that the risk rating is appropriate. 

How should risk assessment be carried out?

There are 5 steps to a risk assessment:

1. Identify the hazards
2. Decide who could be harmed and how
3. Evaluate the risk and existing control measures
4. Record findings
5. Review

You should walk around the area you are risk assessing and speak to those in the area to help gain a clear picture of the hazards that may be present. 

What should I risk assess?

There should be a risk assessment in place for:

When should a risk assessment be reviewed?

All risk assessments should be reviewed on an annual basis, or following any major changes, e.g.

• where a significant change has been made to the building or process;
  • where there is reason to believe that the risk assessment is no longer valid;
  • following an investigation of an accident; and
  • where required as a result of an inspection or audit.

Are there resources available to help?

Yes, the Council has a Risk Assessment policy that can be found on Services for Schools that provides detailed information and offers examples. Templates can also be found under the H&S pages for subscribed schools.