The word ‘efficiency’ can bring about a negative feeling. As a founder or trustee of a school, this term signifies making the most of resources. However, to your staff, teachers and other stakeholders, it may mean budget cuts, putting more focus on KPIs and prioritising processes over people.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. Bringing efficiency to your school or trust is more about reducing unnecessary administrative tasks and helping your employees spend more time on their core roles and responsibilities.
As a school leader, your focus should be on optimising the efficiency of various school departments, including IT, training and development, maintenance, and administration.
In this article, we’ll explore how you can optimise the efficiency of 4 core departments in your school.
Why Can Achieving Efficiency Seem So Hard?
It’s not a quick fix
Transitioning from a low-efficiency department to a more efficient one takes time, investment, and people. Optimising efficiency in your school may appear futile at first because it involves taking people and their time away from their job roles.
It can be uninteresting
Working through systems and processes that need simplifying is not a very thrilling task or subject. It can be difficult to hold the attention and energy of your employees on what needs to be done to bring more efficiency into your school when there are comparatively more exciting tasks to be completed.
..but it’s worth the effort
The benefits of optimising the efficiency of your school or academy definitely outweigh the time, effort, and money invested. From improving the speed of financial reporting to introducing education HR services, enhancing school operations goes beyond improving the work produced. It creates productive teams, better relationships between departments and improved flexibility.
Here’s How You Can Build Efficiency in These 4 School Departments
1. IT
You can’t ignore the important role of technology in delivering effective teaching and learning experiences. Your school’s IT department plays a massive role in providing reliable and secure technological infrastructure to support your school’s goals.
However, many schools fall short when it comes to optimising the efficiency of their IT departments. Whether it’s about being unable to provide the technical support and training or relying on legacy systems and infrastructure, your IT department may be dealing with some common struggles just to be more efficient.
One way to mitigate this is by consulting a reliable IT company with experience serving clients in the education industry. They can assess the current state of your IT systems and department and identify areas of improvement. They can support your IT infrastructure with robust data storage and backup, identify underutilised resources, introduce cybersecurity protocols, and fill gaps in user support and training.
Improve the performance of your IT systems and processes and see how it can positively impact the overall development of your school or trust.
2. Training and Development
The training and development of your teachers is central to ensuring your school or academy is offering the best possible education to your students. Introducing adequate training and development initiatives ensures your teachers are creative, engaging, and efficient deliverers of their content. After all, they are the ones who make the plans, design the lessons, and make maximum use of all resources.
Offering your teachers training sessions and workshops that cover updated technology and educational techniques can help them simplify tasks and increase proficiency as educators. But to ensure this, you need to allocate enough time and resources for your teacher to support this learning, not just as an observer but for implementing it into their lessons.
To achieve this, you can either bring in a training consultant or hire a dedicated training resource to fine-tune the effectiveness of your training and development programmes. Either way, you’ll start observing a visible change in the way your educators deliver education.
3. Maintenance
Maintenance should ideally be an ongoing process for your infrastructure and estates. Your school must engage in regular maintenance and upkeep tasks in order to provide the best possible learning environment. This includes staying on top of electrical and technological maintenance activities.
Maintenance must be prioritised, from checking backup generators to ensuring that all safety measures, from fire alarms to data backups, are functioning properly. Ensure the health and safety of all those on campus by keeping away from hazardous chemicals, such as lead paint and asbestos, and ensuring regular fire safety checks.
However, limiting these activities to your internal maintenance department may not be enough. Your team may not be well-equipped to handle a technological mishap that has the potential to undo weeks of planning. Partnering with the right professionals can help you combat unexpected power outages and ensure safety with minimal disruptions to routine.
4. Administration
Administrative tasks, although necessary, can be efficiency bottlenecks. Streamlining your administrative processes can reduce the unnecessary time, energy and resources spent in carrying out administrative tasks.
If you’re keen to reduce the burden of administrative tasks in your school or academy, you may want to introduce digital tools and technologies. These tools can automate routine tasks such as attendance tracking and management, grading assessments and communicating with parents.
Nowadays, tech companies design software that includes specific features for smoother online enrolment, billing, report generation, and record-keeping. These valuable admin features enhance the productivity and efficiency of your school’s operations.
Consider implementing these technologies in your school if you haven’t already. It’s also important to regularly evaluate and update these systems to keep updated with the latest technological developments.
Summing Up
Fine-tuning the operations of your school’s departments may seem uninteresting and unnecessary at first and need a lot of investment, time and effort, but it has the potential to add more value in delivering quality education.
With these tips, you have a roadmap to start amplifying the efficiency in your school’s core departments, helping your school or academy thrive and achieve goals.