Leadership by example {CASE STUDY}
accountancy qualification to be able to get the Level 7 certificate. I think that’s the sticking point for most people because, unless they’ve had some previous experience with double-entry bookkeeping, it’s quite hard to get your head around it. It involves quite a bit of extra work, but it was a worthwhile course. What would you say your input is into the development and improvement of the school? The majority of my skillset is finance, but I also work closely with the headteacher, governors and other senior leaders to make sure that resources are aligned to the school’s development priorities, and that everything we do is cost-effective, financially viable and, obviously, in the best interests of the children in the end. As you know, school funding is a very challenging area for lots of school leaders, so the fact that I have the financial skills allows me to use appropriate strategic planning processes, tools and techniques to ensure we are getting the best out of our resources and our funding; that’s the main thing. I also have a big impact on the front office of the school; one of my main roles is communicating with parents and other stakeholders - basically being the face of the school sometimes.
Share the biggest professional challenge you’ve had to overcome in this role. It would be the first year that I was in post here. I moved from a federation of two small schools, where I had to do two of everything, and I thought that was difficult! I then saw this job come up and I thought, ‘Oooh! That will be interesting! That will be just one school – it might be more straightforward.’ There were split sites; they’d amalgamated a couple years previously and were still operating from an infant and junior site and had had a new school building built under the priority school building programme. When I came into post it was about six weeks before we were due to move into the new building. I was responsible for all of the snagging and building stuff and was thrown straight in at the deep-end setting up all these new contracts, maintenance agreements and schedules, which I’d had an element of that before in my
Having the financial skills allows me to use appropriate strategic planning processes
Summer 2021
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