Categories
Empowering Professionals

David Walton – Well Being Strategy

At a recent Chairs forum via TEAMS. David Walton (co-chair at St Michael’s CE School) shared his school’s well-being strategy with fellow Chairs. It was an excellent, effective session and there were some great talking points with lots of tips and best practice on how to approach wellbeing.

Why focus on Staff well-being?

  • Staff juggle a multitude of different tasks and demands that can place unexpected pressure on them.
  • There is a growing nationwide concern and awareness of Mental Health challenges arising from the workplace.
  • Staff are more inclined to focus on their pupils’ well-being than their own
  • Evidence indicates multiple benefits such as;

OFSTED’s new education inspection framework (EIF) requires schools to consider staff well-being.

Strategy examples
St Michael’s board of Governors worked on a Well-being strategy collaboratively with the senior leadership team to launch initiatives such as;

  • forming a Well-being steering committee (x2 SLT, x3 staff and x2 Governors)
  • drafting a new Well-being policy
  • signing up to the DfE’s Staff Well-being Charter
  • establishing a Mental Health and Well-being Governor role
  • creating a comprehensive focus and a strong plan of action
  • support with regular drop-in sessions to support staff who have concerns
  • Inset days were dedicated time to increasing Well-being knowledge (including Keynote speakers)
  • Well-being surveys for staff, pupils & parents (Examples of survey questions are available from Governor Services)

Key learnings
A Well-being strategy

  • becomes a strong declaration that both Board of Governors & senior leadership team are keenly interested in and committed to staff’s welfare.
  • makes both parents and the broader school community aware of the school’s approach to well-being

Success requires continued engagement and commitment in their own well-being. Ultimately when a school involves the whole school community in developing a culture of well-being it brings the greatest benefits possible for pupils and staff.

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Categories
Intelligent Operations

Lisa Wilson – Emergency Plan Template

In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, many organisations will have looked to their emergency and business continuity plans to deliver critical services and enable alternative ways of working. In fact, many of the things we learned during the pandemic will help us be more resilient in the future. 

Following a disruptive incident, emergency and business continuity plans should be reviewed and updated with any lessons learned so the plans remain relevant. It’s important to embed the plans in your school’s culture by training your staff in their roles and exercising the plans to test if they work or need to be improved.   

If you haven’t reviewed, updated and exercised your emergency and business continuity plans since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, now is the time. It’s important to consider other emerging issues in your review process such as cyber-attacks, power outage, extreme weather so you can plan how to respond to and maintain your critical services should any of these disrupt your school. 

There is a template emergency plan on the Emergency Planning Team traded services portal that schools can download free of charge.

For any emergency planning or business continuity queries, set up a Head to Head meeting and we’ll connect you to our Emergency Planning Team.

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Intelligent Operations

Smallwood Primary School: A New Approach

Wandsworth’s Smart School Services has created a more accurate workforce planning app that is easy for schools to use and will be rolled out this spring term (2023) to schools signed up to the Schools Financial Advisory Service.

Smallwood Primary (rated Good by Ofsted in 2022) has a unique superpower – access to a really accurate workforce planning tool after signing up to financial planning support with Wandsworth’s Smart School Services. It also speeds up the time that used to be lost reconciling the payroll.

“It’s been a real journey, and the budget mirrored what was happening in other areas,” says headteacher Fiona Loudon who moved to Smallwood in Wandsworth after running a school in Scotland for 11 years. “We had quite a big deficit budget, a lot of work to do (the Ofsted rating required improvement) and we needed to save money. When I started in May 2017, we had 18 teachers leaving, so it was a really difficult time,” says Fiona who explains that alongside mainstream classes, there are 45 students in Smallwood’s Speech and Language Unit with educational health care plans (EHCP).

“A big proportion (75%) of our budget was going on staffing, but the spreadsheets didn’t show what level people were being paid, (eg, .5 or full time),” says Fiona who employs 56 staff. 

Business manager, Dionne Campbell (who joined the school in 2018), adds that with figures out of sync, forecasting and pay felt, “like stabbing in the dark, with nothing that pulled the information together and no clarity.”

Things really changed when Smart Schools Financial Adviser, Charles Roberts, collaborated with a handful of pilot schools (and the payroll service) to devise a more accurate financial planning system for Wandsworth. The aim was to reduce the time and effort it takes heads and business managers to estimate the cost of the workforce and reconcile actual pay with the school’s budget.

Charles Roberts, Smart Schools Financial Adviser

If your forecast is out by even one or two percent of income that’s quite a chunk of cash when school budgets are managed so tightly.

Charles Roberts

“It’s a different approach to a problem,” says Charles, “and that’s important because 80 per cent of a school’s budget is spent on staffing, and if our existing Excel tool was a few per cent out, that’s material. If your forecast is out by even one or two percent of income that’s quite a chunkof cash when school budgets are managed so tightly.”

So how does the magic happen? Charles explains: “The app replicates the reality of all things that happen in the payroll service and payroll departments and is more accurate on national insurance, pensions, spreading a salary across the months in the year, managing pay rises and changes in incremental grades and also manages to model ad hoc payments for extra hours or overtime.”

This enables a school to be able to recast their budget swiftly, if asked to do so.

“Smallwood school had an annual spend of £1.3m on staffing, and the tool was £14 different, which is why it’s called RAPTOR –ridiculously accurate planning tool for organisational resourcing. Ultimately, it’s all about giving the school business manager and head teacher confidence in the numbers,” says Charles.

Dionne Campbell, Business Manager

For business manager Dionne this new way of financial planning speeded up the accuracy of the monthly payroll as well as the six monthly forward planning. “What Charles created pulls up errors in red so we can easily identify and investigate what should be paid and answer, for example, questions about why’s that person got an extra £100 – of yes they’ve done two extra hours.”

Reconciling payroll data is no longer super time- consuming. Charles explains that’s not unusual for schools as, “Some have 40-50 employees – but the tool just highlights those employees that need to be looked at, so is driving action by exception, rather than having to work through everybody. The tool does most of the work for you and will flag those it thinks you need to look at. That creates the feedback loop, so next month it gets more accurate.”

Less discrepancies also meant Smallwood spent less time trying tocontact the payroll team – a particular plus through lockdown when many people were working from home and seemed harder to reach.

We have confidence in the staffing structure of the school, and being able to keep it at the level we need, because very quickly we can see if the percentage of pay for staff is going up, it gives us confidence about managing our budget and staff.

Fiona Loudon
Fiona Loudon, Headteacher

Operating as a pilot, Smallwood has now been using it for a year. “Charlescomes in once a month. He has a report-ready database on his laptop which has got all of our staff data,” says Dionne explaining how the pair go through,“ line by line, so any discrepancies [eg, from sickness, pay increases, reduced hours, jury service, pensions, unpaid leave, unauthorised absence, extra hours and pension opt in and out] are highlighted quickly. It’s easier to use and really helped, as we feel more confident that this is the accurate figure on staffing and can put in any questions that governors have.

“We have confidence in the staffing structure of the school, andbeing able to keep it at the level we need, because very quickly we can see if the percentage

of pay for staff is going up, it gives us confidence about managing our budget and staff. It is now monitored so carefully, we are not going to get any big surprises,” says Fiona delightedthat the budgets are fit for purpose and reconciliation far quicker.

Dionne agrees: “Charles has been instrumental in supporting theschool and getting the budget into the really good position that it is in now. That app works really well.”

Visit finance.smartschool.services

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Categories
Brilliant Learning

St Mary’s Primary School: Shelf Life

The one-form entry school in Putney wasn’t short of books – they had nearly 5,000 – but when Amanda consulted with her Year 6s in 2019 they were very keen to have a proper library. “We made our library into an art room 10-15 years ago, though we made sure each classroom had a vibrant book corner. Our library books went along corridors, but it was higgledy-piggledy and wasn’t well used,” says Deputy Head, Amanda Bishop from St Mary’s recalling the library makeover project.

The opportunity came when the reception area was upgraded. “We thought we’d use the small new study room for teaching, group work and music lessons, but I felt we had an opportunity to make it into a space with books.” 

Amanda is a self-confessed ideas person. Knowing that she, “didn’t have the expertise to organise a library, and that it was a project that was important ‘to do properly’ she went to Wandsworth Learning Resources Service with a group of Year 6 children to find out just what they wanted and turn it into an action plan. When the pandemic meant everything moved online their library project stalled, but the £4,000 budget agreed by the Head Teacher and governors (thanks in part to that action plan and timeline) was protected. 

Amanda Bishop, Deputy Headteacher

Post Covid-19, the remit changed a little. 

“We knew we wanted a space for children to really enjoy reading and mixing it with a study space – so now we do call this small space a library. It is a place to celebrate books in a relaxing enjoyable space,” says Amanda who helps manage it with Year 6s librarians. 

“It’s so nice to hear that,” says Wandsworth Learning Resources Service (WLRS) librarian J, beaming as the Deputy Head describes a typical Friday library lunchtime with Year 6s relaxing on bean bags reading their favourite books – The Gruffalo, Gorilla and Hairy Maclary – to the Year 2s.

The project was led by Wanda Gajewski the Senior Librarian at WLRS who has much experience with school library developments. Amanda found WLRS’s advice and skill at re-organising the books invaluable. It’s a plus that the books are well organised so children can access them easily and know where to put them back.

There’s a real focus on reading and the enjoyment of reading and having a quiet space at lunchtime rather than a hive of activity.

Amanda Bishop

“We re-labelled 3,162 to form the base of the collection, the remaining 1,606 were inappropriate, out-of-date or in too poor condition to go into the library,” says WLRS librarian, J. “My predecessor had put a lot of thought into how to arrange it. Then when covid regulations relaxed a bit, I came in and made a few extra adjustments.”

Wanda and J also labelled books, made suggestions about how tolay out the space to make it easy to use for different activities. Bean bags were added after WLRS talked to students.

Amanda remembers it as a fuss-free time. “WLRS were brilliant, with an action plan of exactly what they were going to do and a clear vision. I had all these ideas,” she says, adding that WLRS worked out “what was feasible, who was going to do what, what resources I needed to get and even advice for where to get shelves (via links). It was bespoke to the school and had a timescale of what we needed to do when.”

Library making can be a decision minefield, but J points out, “WLRS staff have helped set up many libraries, taken consultations from teachers and pupils and integrated that in a cohesive and rigorous way.

Even with the simplified Dewey system (used across Wandsworth) there are all kinds of small decisions and options along the way – for example do you put Spaceship books with Space or Vehicles? Anyone could make those decisions, but WLRS librarians work with the curriculum every day making it easier and quicker for us to hit the ground running. Therewas a timetable and action plan from word go.

J Lythgoe, WLRS Librarian

WLRS librarians have helped set up many libraries, taken consultations from teachers and pupils and integrated that in a cohesive and rigorous way.

J Lythgoe

The WLRS team also provided a guide book for the pupils about how to navigate the collection and how to use the Dewey system.

Which means “it is manageable with new books as I can train the children up and they are learning how to sort the Dewey system out for themselves,” adds Amanda – in itself a massive time-save and a proper lifeskill.

J emhasises the importance of creating spaces for pupils to read in school libraries. “We provide books to primary schools, so it seems counter-intuitive, but really what WLRS is about is bringing inspiration, promoting more access and empowerment toschool children to foster a love of reading. Having space to do this is a key component – an absolute good for schools and pupils which completely fits with our mission and resources.”

Over Zoom Amanda smiles: “That’s why we work well together, that’s exactly our vision of our school as well. We want reading to be really crucial. In an age of technology, opening a book is really important.” And of course having their own library is exactly what the children wanted.

Visit resources.smartschool.services

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Categories
Intelligent Operations

Smart Money, Smart Working: Intelligent Operations

In pursuing leaner operations and more efficient processes, time is an often overlooked factor to consider when looking at cost savings. 

As time invariably equates to money spent, you may look at reducing the school’s administrative burden through outsourcing, or engage with specialist educational expertise that adds value to your offer; or ensures your have the right plan in place to protect your position.

Operational drains on a school’s finances are not always obvious, which is why it is imperative to partner with a resource that can help you objectively view the complete picture.

Magnetic Marketing 

Increasing pupil numbers is a crucial strategy for expanding budget allocation. The more pupils your school attracts, the larger your budget. 

In marketing terms, this revolves around creating more awareness of your school’s unique offer. After pinpointing how your learning experience differs from other schools, you can then align your strengths, values and approach with the criteria parents and pupils are looking for. 

This service is a new partnership between Smart School Services and West Creative – marketing and communication experts, with a proven track record of helping local and national education sector partners.

  • A tailored response based on your school’s unique marketing needs
  • Working alongside schools to create actionable marketing plans with an accompanying suite of deliverables
  • Full suite of integrated creative services available – digital and print expertise

Mitigating Risk / Insurance 

Catering equipment is one of the big ticket items that can burn a whole in your school’s budget, especially if equipment breaks down before a planned upgrade. 

Smart School’s Catering Service offers comprehensive equipment hire insurance to ensure school’s minimise the cost of repairs or replacements – with no limit on how many times a school can make a claim. 

Given the cost of a condemned combi oven is anything up to £10,000 to replace, this service is definitely a smart money investment.

Cut Your Losses

Unfortunately, the true cost of equipment does not always become apparent until after its purchase.

While a paper shredder may seem a relatively inexpensive purchase, the valuable time it takes to operate, unblock and ensure the waste is disposed of safely quickly adds up.

Smart School’s Confidential Shredding Service will not only take over these time-wasting tasks, it also removes the risk of fines from a data breach by providing a certificate of destruction.

On the Money Outsourcing 

Payroll comes with a unique set of complexities and demands that goes much further than reconciling the monthly payment cycle. 

From compliant practice to improved accuracy, outsourcing your end-to-end requirements often makes more fiscal sense. 

Using Smart School’s Payroll Service allows schools to benefit from dedicated, accountable expertise while saving on the cost of employing and retaining staff.

Plan. Respond. Recover. 

Smart School’s Emergency Planning Team offer schools a comprehensive risk assessment that identifies all potential emergency threats and hazards that could potentially impact the school. 

Ultimately, the business continuity plan keeps your school running during and after an incident, reducing costs as well as the duration of any disruption.

Protect Your Provision 

Smart School’s Heath and Safety Service focuses on sharing knowledge to reduce financial liabilities through fines and prosecution. 

The service provides a cost-effective way for schools to ensure they have access to expert Health and Safety advice and support, including health and safety inspections, audits and training. 

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Empowering Professionals

Smart Money, Smart Working: Empowering Professionals

For learning to thrive, the quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers. As the UK’s best-performing schools will testify, they are only as good as the teachers in their classrooms.

With inflation currently around 10% and most teachers likely to experience real-terms salary cuts this year, attracting and retaining excellent educators is challenging.

To stop talent turning their back on the profession for the private sector, we need to add value to our offer. A loyal, highly trained and incentivised staffroom will not only reduce recruitment costs, it delivers stability for students and staff while creating happy, knowledgeable and productive learning environments. 

Purchasing Power

A well-established Employee Benefits programme is a powerful way to add value to your recruitment package. 

As the cost of living crisis continues to bite, offering discounts on everyday items at high street retailers and supermarkets is an appealing benefit. Add wellness centre discounts and the ability to spread the cost of larger purchases over 12 months to the list, and schools can now offer an attractive differentiator to prospective and existing staff members.

  • Smart School Employee Benefits Service was launched in 2022 in response to feedback from schools
  • A small sum per member of staff gives unfettered access to all of the programme’s growing number of benefits

It Pays To Be Compliant 

With the Department for Education placing much emphasis on the need for school boards to employ professional clerks, some schools are still deputising their heads’ PAs to take minutes during important meetings to save costs. 

Professional clerks ensure accurate records of meetings are kept and offer timely, impartial advice on correct governance process and procedures. Smart School Governor Services provides professional clerks, who are trained and kept abreast of clerking requirements and legislation at affordable rates. 

  • A professional clerk will be assigned and dedicated to your school who will support you with agenda setting; minute taking that reflects best practice and considers the requirements of Ofsted and audit; provide model policy review schedules and annual work plans; and have the ability and knowledge to provide guidance during meetings

Sick Notes Suck Resources

Teachers have spent at least 1.5 million days off work owing to stress and mental health issues, new figures have revealed, amid continued concerns over the post-pandemic pressures they are facing in the classroom. This figure is up by almost a fifth compared to three years ago.

Having the right support systems in place is crucial to combatting teacher burnout and subsequent health issues. 

The Smart School Occupational Health Service is able to support school staff through sickness absence. The unit offers advice on all aspects of health and well-being. With a pro-active approach, the overarching aim of the service is to support an individual to remain at work.

Offering expert advice and support about ill-health problems helps school staff to self-manage their issues, which in turn leads to an earlier and more effective return to work, improves attendance and boosts performance.

Thank you very much for your email and advice – it’s much appreciated as always, helping me to manage sickness absence. 

Paddock School

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Brilliant Learning

Smart Money, Smart Working: Brilliant Learning

Responding to the limitations that real-term funding cuts and inflationary pressure has wrought on learning requires a comprehensive approach to strategic financial management, budgeting and accounting.

There is no doubting the seriousness of the situation facing school finances, but we cannot allow balancing the books to take precedence over student success.

Brilliant learning is complex and multi-faceted. Our response to its funding needs to be equally so. 

This means accessing services efficiently and ensuring their effective deployment; grasping the potential of data and using that insight to do things differently; while tackling resources and questioning whether we are using them properly. 

Mindful Money Management

When dealing with educational, social or mental health issues, the sooner a child’s difficulties are isolated, identified and dealt with, the more successfully they will learn and the less their self-esteem, self-confidence and education will suffer.

However, schools have often been affected by long assessment wait times, unconnected expertise and expensive fees.

In response, the Schools and Community Psychology Service (SCPS) offers a full time, expansive team with multiple areas of extended expertise. Working with SCPS will save your school both time and money – cutting wait times for assessments; giving access to multi-disciplinary expertise; all while reducing costs.

  • Schools purchasing the entire service will benefit from a bespoke approach, with a dedicated team responding to emerging needs in their specific school context 
  • Schools will roughly realise a 50% per hour saving, compared to paying privately for educational psychologist (EP) assessments
  • Private EP assessments are usually costed around £150-200 per hour and Smart School Services cost is £590 per day (6 hrs) 
  • Further discounts available for larger packages (15 days and above)

Pupil Insight: Food for Thought 

England’s school population is set to shrink by almost a million children over the next 10 years, according to the government’s latest data, raising the prospect of surplus places and school closures in the years ahead. 

As the need to attract students intensifies, so does the need to ensure the school receives the optimal provision available for every pupil to maximise budget contributions. To help, Smart School’s Research and Evaluation Unit (REU) provides a high-quality data analysis service to underpin your performance planning. 

An example of which can be found within the REU’s School Census support, guidance and checking service. Among other insight, the service helps schools to identify children on free school meals, which in turn, increases their budget.

  • A secondary school hadn’t identified 10 children on free school meals transferring from primary school. Identifying the error and understanding the free school meals protection rule, the service was able to inform the school in time for the October Census, when DfE funding is calculated. 

Space Savings

Learning resources are the catalyst for brilliant learning – empowering teachers to perform at their best. While the benefits are numerous, there are an equally lengthy set of challenges.

Issues such as finding the space needed to house a wide variety of material. Or condition – tatty books rarely inspire pupils to read for pleasure. And obviously, the cost of updating resources to meet new educational developments. 

Smart School’s Learning Resources Service provides the answer through its cost-effective annual subscription delivering termly resource packs. Gain access to over 120,000 items and a dedicated librarian consultant to help you champion the curriculum, free up space and cut costs. All delivered in a ready-to-go resource box. 

Visit: resources.smartschool.services

Building Value

Maintaining your school’s infrastructure is both complex and costly. Whether you need to ensure IT investment is fit for purpose and future-proofed; your library area is the optimal use of space; or the development of the school’s computing curriculum is actioned correctly; bringing in professional insight is imperative. 

  • Planning and consultancy from Smart School experts with years of experience eradicates expensive investment mistakes while saving valuable time 
  • Implementation by industry leading specialists, including staff training
  • Ongoing support and insight to keep you ahead of the curve
  • Significant savings realised when schools combine services into a coherent whole

Wandsworth IT and CLC have proven that working together benefits the school, saving time and money. We have been impressed with their recent work improving our computing curriculum and ensuring our network is running efficiently.

Harriet Eweles
Headteacher, St Anselms


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Categories
Brilliant Learning Empowering Professionals ICT

Michael Hallick: Finding Value

Objective analysis of school finances is more important now than it has ever been. The post-pandemic, high level of financial volatility has seen a marked growth in school costs – reducing the purchasing power of school budgets, stretching resources and stifling long-term fiscal planning. In spite of competing factors, including rising energy costs and food inflation, schools that adopt a smart, holistic approach can still realise cost-saving opportunities to help alleviate budgetary constraints.

The Value of Collaboration

When Pearson’s School Report asked school leaders what they expected to be the top three challenges for their school to manage over the next year to 18 months, budget pressures came top of the list. I can understand why! A combination of high inflation and demographic changes that have seen numbers of pupils in primary schools across London, and even the country, decline, creating a scenario where income is flat or falling (if your school is lucky enough, rising slightly) but definitely not keeping up with inflationary cost pressures.

The hard reality is school leaders are having to do more with less. We hear you; we understand you, and we want to be at the heart of helping you through this challenging period. We are passionate about supporting schools in a collaborative manner, valuing our partnership as we work to deliver on our mutual ambitions for all our children.

We want to add value to your quality of education while considering your budgets through tailored services that meet your needs. Our Financial advisory service is the best prepared and most sophisticated that I have ever seen it. Our SBM academy is thriving and developing the next generation of SBMs for our schools. The trainees are adding more and more value every day. Financial Advisors and the wrap around tools and support that comes with the service, will work with you side by side to meet the demands of the coming year. Supporting our schools to maximise their budgets, so that crucial staffing and support services are still affordable. 

Smart Money, Smart Working.

We hope our latest report provides you with practical ideas that you can implement to realise the best future for your school, teachers, pupils, and the communities that you serve. 

Michael Hallick
Assistant Director – Business and Resources
Children’s Services

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Categories
Intelligent Operations

School’s Decarbonisation Framework

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

Categories
Intelligent Operations

James West: “Educational Waffle” and why it’s reducing school enrolments 

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.


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:

  • Active learning
  • Heart of all we do
  • Success in life
  • Hard-working
  • Successful
  • Realising potential
  • Dedicated staff
  • Inclusive
  • Welcoming
  • Community focused
  • Achievement driven
  • Learning journey

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. 


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.

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