As we mark National School Business Leaders Day (6th June), it’s the perfect time to recognise the vital role School Business Leaders (SBLs) play in the smooth running and long-term sustainability of our schools. Often working behind the scenes, SBLs navigate financial pressures, manage operational risks, and strive to ensure that every penny works harder for pupils and staff alike.
Mike Neales, Senior Consultant at Litmus, who specialises in the education sector, works closely with SBLs across the country and understands the mounting challenges they face. While the specifics can vary from school to school, there are some common threads that run through many of the conversations we’re having with clients today.
The funding squeeze
Right now, the biggest challenge facing school business leaders is funding. While inflation has cooled slightly compared to the last couple of years, the impact of National Insurance increases, a lowered NI threshold, and a 6.7% rise in the minimum wage are hitting budgets hard. These changes have a domino effect across staffing, procurement, and contracts – making it increasingly difficult to balance the books without compromising on quality.
The reality is that government funding isn’t keeping pace with rising costs. Take Universal Infant Free School Meals (UIFSM) as an example. The funding per meal has recently risen from £2.58 to £2.61, but this marginal increase doesn’t come close to covering the real-world rise in labour, food and energy costs.
Making every pound count
In this challenging landscape, SBLs need to ensure they are getting strong value from their contracts and suppliers.
Here’s our advice on what SBLs can do to achieve this:
- Benchmark contract performance: Assess how your current contracts stack up against the market and help identify where improvements or savings could be made.
- Renegotiate with contractors: If things aren’t adding up, you need to know about it so that cost-savings can be made.
- Run competitive tenders – get the best value from your contracted suppliers.
- Ongoing monitoring: ensure that contractors deliver on the promises made.
The difficulty comes when SBL are already at full capacity with their day-to-day workload, so where do they find the time to do all of this? That’s where Litmus comes in. We do the hard work for them, by helping schools take control of their service contracts – whether that’s catering, cleaning, or facilities management – through a range of support services designed to deliver both quality and financial efficiency.
Here are some of the ways that we support SBLs:
- Benchmarking contract performance: We assess how your current contracts stack up against the market and help identify where improvements or savings could be made.
- Renegotiating with contractors: If things aren’t adding up, we’ll support you in reviewing and renegotiating your agreements to reflect current financial realities.
- Running competitive tenders: We manage end-to-end procurement processes, ensuring compliance and transparency while securing the best outcomes for your school.
- Ongoing monitoring: Once a contract is in place, we help ensure that contractors deliver on the promises made at award, with regular reviews and performance checks.
In short, we give SBLs the data, insights and expertise they need to achieve the best value – not just in terms of cost – but also quality, compliance and service delivery. It’s no small feat and has a significant impact on the facilities, environment and catering for both students and staff.
If you’d like to talk to Litmus about how we can help your school navigate these challenges, please contact us here
The Litmus team