THE ROAD TO NOWHERE?

EMMA GRAY, chief finance and operations officer, reflects on a tumultuous year and looks to 2023, hoping it will be a road that leads to recovery, and not to nowhere

When I look back on 2022 I don’t just see the tumble I went through personally. At the time of writing (and the year isn’t over yet!) we are on our third prime minister, our fifth education secretary and a new monarch; no wonder we are all reeling from change.

Inevitably, central decision-making has been delayed for months and we are all left worrying about our budgets, energy use, the cost-of-living and maintaining our homes. For the school business leader, these concerns are not only personal but can often extend to everyone in our community.

Should we be doing more to ensure our pupils are well-nourished? Are our staff struggling to pay their bills? When can we afford to put the heating on? Am I ever going to fill that vacancy? Can we find any funding to fix the hall roof this year? Should we still be putting money aside for a rainy day because it sure feels like it is coming down cats and dogs right now!

Ever the optimist, I’m hopeful that, even with everything going on, we can find some stability going into 2023 as we start to take some measure of the new government. I might be biased, but I do tend to judge the incumbents on their approach to education. I know they have a lot of other things on their plates, but the importance they place

on our young people is key for me. I look around my trust and see that staff value every single pupil, and want the best for them. We celebrate achievement along the way, however small that might be, and we work to maintain some consistency in what, for many children today, is an increasingly inconsistent world.

I think it’s important to consider each school in the UK as its own vibrant community. Whether you’re a large secondary academy, a small maintained primary or part of a multi-academy trust, every school has its own identity - but we are all working towards shared common goals. Is now a good time to remind the new ‘powers that be’ of those goals? ● The ability to live in, and contribute to, the community. ● Happiness and wellbeing. ● Opportunity and achievement. ● Independence and resilience. Would you add anything else to that list?

Most headteachers and SBLs will tell you it is not just about funding. It’s about using the resources we have in the most efficient way we can. It’s about focusing on what is important, and working together to achieve it. I think it is also about being agile to change, embracing new ideas and keeping up! When I think back over my career, I’m often amazed at how much our world has changed in twenty years - but also how much our schools have remained the same.

Our industry seems to be reluctant to take risks, or embed new technology, and it can be very slow to respond to change. Is this because school leaders fear that a wrong step would adversely affect whole year groups of pupils, or that they don’t want their schools to be unwilling guinea pigs for change, or just that they like sitting in that comfortable chair?

Around the world, the education sector is changing; the way pupils learn is changing

and the skills they need to live in their future world is changing. My biggest fear is that UK school children will be left behind in a future global employment market because our education system was poorly-led from the top, reluctant to innovate, and underfunded.

My key takeaway from 2022 is the knowledge that, when you’ve been through a tough time, you are not going to fully recover in a few short weeks. I’m in no doubt that I have changed significantly from the person I was in 2021. In a way, I’ve had to say goodbye to the me that has now gone and rediscover a ‘new’ person. Weirdly, I rather like who I am now. My experience has changed my skillset and my outlook making me, I think, more useful to my community. I’m not afraid of what has happened, or my new phase of my life, but I am determined to get the most out of it and enjoy it!

In the same way, we are not going to bounce straight back from the national changes and challenges we have all experienced during 2022. We need to be gentle with ourselves, give everyone the opportunity to reflect, and decide what we want to do, going forward. What is important? I look at this time as a clear chance to reset. Are we going to take the opportunity, and initiate new ways of working in our schools, or are we going to trudge along with the ‘this-is-how-we’vealways-done-it’ mindset?

Change is not easy, but I’ve come to realise that it is a whole lot harder if you fight it. As the saying goes ‘Change is inevitable; growth is optional’. I believe that now is the right time for our education systems to start making changes for the future - to embrace the post-pandemic world of the early-twenties, and to look at what we have learned as an opportunity.

We want to put ourselves, and our communities, on the road to recovery, not the road to nowhere.