It’s no secret that funding is tight in education, and the number of schools and trusts struggling with their finances has been increasing in recent times.
I joined Reach South Academy Trust as CEO at the start of the last academic year, and it’s clear to me that trusts must have a strong grip on their finances to be successful.
Following a robust review, we have now reduced our top slice from 6.5 per cent to 2.5 per cent and still forecast an in-year surplus of £1 million, even after the recent pay review announcement.
This has largely been achieved thanks to a slimming down and streamlining of our central team. In total, we have removed 13 posts. This wasn’t easy work, but it was necessary.
Finding new efficiencies
Reviewing the value of central roles is always going to be uncomfortable, but ultimately those working in state education are public servants, and as a trust we must evidence value for money.
We concluded that numerous centrally held roles simply did not deliver sufficient value. For example, previously, there was a role on the trust team responsible for tracking attendance across schools.
This was unnecessary; monitoring attendance is a statutory responsibility for schools and can be more effectively managed by them with support from the school improvement team.
There was also an outdated culture of administrative support within the central team, with numerous members of staff having their own personal assistants. These individual PA positions have now been removed, and support has been streamlined into a centralised admin team.
I do not have my own PA. I consider myself perfectly capable of running my own diary and inbox.
Rethinking improvement team structures
We have also restructured our school improvement team. They are no longer part of the central trust team.
Instead, school improvement leads are based directly in our schools; this has allowed schools to expand their leadership capacity and put these people where they are best placed to provide greater challenge and support.
Within our regional model, they are based in schools every day, not only providing monitoring and challenge but also support and leadership capacity on the ground.
We are a regional trust with 21 schools across the South West, but in seeking to be both operationally and financially efficient, we are now structured with five strong regional groups but with the central team running like one you find in national trusts.
This model aims to combine the benefits of local leadership and responsiveness with the consistency and strategic financial oversight of a national organisation.
Saving a cool £1m
These measures and other efficiencies have allowed us to save approximately £1 million on our central workforce spend, even after growing the trust through a recent merger.
In fact, our financial position is now so strong that just three months after the merger, we have been asked by the Department of Education to welcome two further schools into our trust family.
The financial security of our trust would not be possible without the fastidious oversight of our trust board. We are fortunate to benefit from the expertise of trustees with exceptional backgrounds in finance and the banking sector, many of whom have been at the very top of their respective fields.
This expertise undeniably raises the standards and expectations at board level, which subsequently permeates throughout our multi-academy trust. Strong governance helps create a culture of high standards and robust assurance for all stakeholders.
Pay ratios
In the coming months, I suspect many trusts will be crunching their numbers to make their books balance, and this is only right. However, there is also a moral imperative behind our work in this area.
As a publicly funded organisation, we fully recognise our responsibility to be accountable for how we organise our finances. We are clear that all financial decisions should be entirely justifiable and support public confidence in the trust.
Executive pay progression at our trust aligns with broader workforce remuneration trends and will not exceed teacher pay growth. We have chosen to operate an internal 8:1 pay ratio approach, meaning that the highest paid executive will not earn more than eight times the lowest paid staff member.
We remain focused on ensuring that every financial decision we make creates trust in our organisation, reflects our values and contributes to the success and wellbeing of our school communities.
Tom Leverage is CEO of Reach South Academy Trust
