Understanding Strategic Forces

Week 4 Understanding Strategic Forces Paper

LDR/300

Leading schools forward in times of financial uncertainty

Today many school teachers as result of the political interventions prefer not to be at helm of the process of developing a school. This has been the case in the recent past since the general election. This has really caught up my attention so much that I have now given up listing to music on my way to school and have sought to listen to the daily news on the radio instead to find out on the educational plans, economic reforms and budget cuts of the coalition government.

Many people at the school showed unhappiness if not a moderate response to the government's comprehensive budget plans that were declared on 20th October. At that time we were anticipating to make some daily improvement in the school after going through considerable change and development for nearly three years resulting from local reorganization.

We were hoping for a suitable moment and a calm atmosphere to announce some productive plans as the school reopened on September 1st. However, as we heard that ICT budgets were being reduced, with the closure of Becta, we felt uneasy about our ability to meet the costs of developing a virtual learning environment and online reporting system. The status quo was such, that we felt concerned whether we would have the school leadership programs and the support from the National College in the future. Also we were afraid whether our exam office and middle leaders would continue to have the support and advice of the QCDA in relation to GCSE assessment and curriculum design. As the budget cuts began to spread across a number of organizations, we were worried whether we would be forced to search for home made solution or do things ourselves for the services that had been made available to us in the past.

However, we felt a great respite to hear that the school budgets had not faced the same fate as other government departments and would instead see a rise of GBP 3.6bn in its budget from GBP35.4bn to GBP 39bn for the following four years.

However, the overall Education department budget had decreased by GBP1.2bn for the next four year. This had resulted from a reduction of 3% in the departmental resource funding for frontline resources and a 33% reduction in administration budget of the department which covered funding for several education quangos.

ICT: cutting costs while maintaining the ethos of innovative learning

Today many schools have a Managed Learning Environment (MLE) with an online reporting system to allow the parents the opportunity to review their child's progress, attendance and behavior at school. This will cost a considerable amount and will entail signing contracts with those who supply these services.

Therefore, given the present situation with regard to cutting costs, it is essential to reconsider whether it possible to carry out these tasks in-house. For example, it should be contemplated whether the MLE system can be designed in such as away, so that parents are able to access their child's details by utilizing one MLE login or whether the learning resource team or ICT technicians could launch this system at a lower cost than the annual contract charge. In addition, it is important to compare the cost of the internet service provider of the school with other competitors in the market and perhaps inquire into country buy-in service since they might be more cost effective safe and reliable than any other option.

Also, by uploading subject material, past papers and other costly material to the MLE instead of supplying them (textbooks etc) to students physically, it is possible to reduce department costs by effectively utilizing ICT. However, uploading content into the MLE will take some time and effort. Yet students will receive the same content in a different format while saving costs through ICT.

Streamlining information

It is also possible to eliminate unnecessary aspects and streamline various information management systems into a single system to save costs of the school. For example it is important to avoid using a separate group of staff on the systems for controlling rewards and punishments, external to the software/system utilized for attendance and reporting.

It is important to recreate a similar platform like Becta's albeit in a smaller scale to suit the school community, in order to effectively utilize technology for learning, protecting learners and involve families with the student's education. Following are a number of steps that could be considered.

- The school should concentrate on how to utilize ICT for learning, teaching and supporting staff in their daily work. For this purpose, it should apply the school improvement plan together with the schedules for monitoring progress like departmental reviews and processes for performance management.

- It is important to build up an objective for using a MLE which will contribute to the progress of the whole student body.

- It is essential to set up an innovative forum backup by those staff members who support ICT. These staff members will be able to play a critical role in the continued professional development (CPD) sessions which will encourage other staff members and possibly students. These sessions should be used for e-learning and for this purpose try to hire that expert knowledge from within the school instead of searching for external support.

- Give the opportunity for young staff members (who may be more ICT savvy than older staff members) to share their skills with the others staff members.

- It is essential to select an individual from the senior ICT team to promote e-safety. In this regard, parents should also be involved in sessions and informed through demonstrations on how to protect their children at their home when using online systems for learning.

- It also possible to get advice from organization like CEOP (Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre) and also get the older students to help promote e-learning and safety. These methods will allow staff to gain knowledge on what type of threats the students may face when online, and what feature of an MLE would be useful for students to learn better.

- In order reduce the cost of building up a MLE, it is also possible to use the services of the older students (Year 12 / 13) for a pay in order to upload material to MLE.

- In addition, as a part of the student leadership program, it is possible to assign a group of students as ICT ambassadors to work with staff and other students for improving ICT.

Putting