Ofsted recently reported that few schools provide “a coherent cycle of induction and training, performance management and career development.” There are some outstanding success stories from schools who have reformed the ways in which they deploy the wider workforce, but many more schools have not yet tapped into the real potential available.

Ofsted visited 23 schools in the 2007/08 school year, to evaluate the effectiveness of the school workforce reform introduced in 2003. Although many schools had recruited a wider range of staff to meet the requirements of the national agreement, most had given “little thought to how the newly created roles and responsibilities contributed to the work of the whole school.” This will be a familiar scenario to many School Business Managers, recruited as the answer to every problem, and then left to work out their own job description.

However, the growing awareness of the potential of the wider workforce, including both teaching support staff and administrative/management staff, can only be good news for SBMs. This Ofsted report found that

Members of the wider workforce responsible for supporting management systems were becoming more effective because schools had a better understanding of how their work could contribute indirectly to school improvement and raising pupils’ achievement.

The recommendations made in the report include improving the career development and training opportunities for the wider workforce as a route to greater school improvement. It is clear that SBMs could play a major role in the development of a coherent cycle of training and professional development for the wider workforce, to the benefit of all concerned.

To view the Ofsted report in full, go to

http://www.ofsted.gov.uk/Ofsted-home/Publications-and-research/Browse-all-by/Documents-by-type/Thematic-reports/The-deployment-training-and-development-of-the-wider-school-workforce

For more information on training and professional development for SBMs, go to

http://www.tda.gov.uk/leaders/supportstaff/school_business_mgrs.aspx

or visit the MMU website for SBMs

http://www.schoolbusinessmanagement.org.uk/