FEATURE FOCUS: SOFTWARE IN SCHOOLS
Why now is the time to tackle the administrative burden facing schools
pandemic, to skyrocketing costs - budgets have never been tighter.
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n our first look this month at the many uses of software in schools we’re delighted to be joined by David Myatt, chief financial officer at Deal Education Alliance for Learning Trust (DEALT), who looks at the administrative burden now facing schools and offers his thoughts on how to tackle it.
It’s fair to say that schools across the country are facing their fair share of challenges. From dealing with the long-lasting impact of the COVID-19
This comes at a time when teachers’ pay is under scrutiny. In fact, members of the National Education Union (NEU), the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL), the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) and NASUWT all voted to turn down the Government’s pay offer back in April. In the run up to this year’s exams, schools have also had to deal with closing the knowledge gap created by the various lockdown measures that we saw in 2020 and 2021. A survey by the Association of School and College Leaders from 2022 – the first year that summer exams returned to school halls since 2019 – quantified just how stressful GCSE exams can be. According to 82% of headteachers, stress and anxiety were higher than before 2020 and 78% of headteachers had received more requests from students who wanted to take their exams away from the main exam hall – something that is normally requested due to high levels of stress.
Exacerbating the situation even further is the fact that operating costs are rising almost exponentially, with many school leaders left asking themselves how much further they can cut spending without reducing the support and resources available to staff and, of course, pupils. This unique set of challenges have all added to the administrative burden facing both teachers and back office support staff and it’s clear that
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www.education-today.co.uk something needs to change.
Reducing admin to improve recruitment and retention
Having been identified as one of the main reasons people decide to leave the profession in the first place, time spent on admin is not only tiresome, it also acts as a distraction for teachers, finance teams and school business managers. While teacher recruitment and retention has been an ongoing challenge, the pressure appears to have worsened over recent years. In fact, research undertaken last September found that searches in the UK for leaving the teaching profession were up by almost 30% during the 2021/22 academic year.
The research, undertaken by Access Education, looked at a range of specific search terms in two main areas; ‘leaving teaching’ and ‘alternative careers for teachers’ to get a better understanding of retention and future intent for staff. Looking at specific keywords on a national scale, searches for the keyword ‘leaving teaching’ were up 34.1% when compared to 2020/21, with ‘alternative careers for teachers’ also up by more than a fifth (21.8%). Another eye-opening stat was for searches for ‘jobs for teachers leaving education’ which was up a startling 808% year- on-year.
But what action can schools take to tackle these challenges and bring about positive change?
June 2023
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