All schools operate within tight fiscal restraints, whether it is a maintained school facing an unfunded pay award, an independent school grappling with VAT costs and the loss of business rate relief or an international school facing profit demands from the owner.

However, it is not just money where heads and principals have limited scope to shape their school: time, people and space are all constrained resources, too, and need to be managed like a financial budget.

Budgeting time

Time is by far the most valuable resource that we have in schools.

We have limited time within the school week and much of that is tied up with delivering curriculum subjects. This can make it feel like time for anything else is never possible.

However, with some creativity it is possible to find time to provide learning opportunities beyond the traditional canon. For example, at Kellett, the British International School in Hong Kong, our vision was to prepare the young people to be future-ready global leaders.

To do this we allocated 80 minutes a week from Year 5 to Year 8 for students to study “Innovation”, a non-examined, project-based learning programme in which teams solved problems associated with the UN Sustainable Development Goals. This was followed by a “non-GCSE” option to study ”Innovation and Oceanography”.

At Berkhamsted School, situated just outside the M25 and 35 minutes from Euston station, with a significant proportion of parents who commuted into the City of London, we decided to allocate time to creating a sixth-form mini-MBA programme in partnership with business school Hult Ashridge. This programme was timetabled alongside the A-level programme as an alternative to study for the EPQ (extended project qualification).

Whatever your school may choose to spend time on in such areas will be context-dependent, of course. But the key is to recognise that time is finite and so whatever you do with it is “spending” a resource - so be intentional about how it is used.

Budgeting people

The staffing budget of a school can account for anything from 50 per cent to 80 per cent of a school’s financial budget.

But people are so much more than a bottom-line cost - they are your school. To summarise Jim Collins, leadership is about “getting the right people on the bus”, in the right seats on the bus, with the bus driving in the right direction.

Leaders must recognise that any decision they make around an appointment is a resource allocation in terms of strategy and culture - whether it is appointing a new leader or teacher, giving a TLR or a responsibility allowance or providing non-contact time. These are all decisions that will nudge the school in the desired direction - or not if the wrong decision is made.

At Kellett, we conducted a review of allowances and were able to create five assistant head roles to drive school improvement in the key areas of academic, data and exams, pastoral, co-curricular and staff development.

At JESS Dubai, meanwhile, we were able to establish a programme of sporting excellence by reallocating part of the staffing budget to appoint elite coaches rather than PE teachers.

In both cases the money spent was the same as before but the choice we made around the individuals was more strategic and represented a far better return on our “people budget”.

Budgeting space

Schools never have enough space; partly, in my experience, because there is a tendency for departments to engineer a land grab when any space becomes available.

Then, given that “possession is nine tenths of the law” and that teachers have a tendency to “nest”, it is a task of Hercules to reclaim it.

That said, an effective, if unpopular at times, card for a school leader to play is to conduct a space audit starting with a blank piece of paper. After all, moving house can be a cathartic act.

“Structures create cultures” and a re-evaluation of space can be a real opportunity for a school principal and the leadership team to cultivate a new ethos. Space audits usually pay for themselves because the refit costs are far lower than that of constructing a new building.

For example, at Kellett we were able to reorganise the site to create a state-of-the-art “cafe culture” sixth-form centre by relocating the library and doing away with two IT assessment rooms.

All told, as a leader it is easy to fixate on your financial budget, and understandably so. But in reality all leaders face constraint on resources in all areas. The trick is to know this and then work out how to use them in the best and most efficient way possible.

Mark Steed is the principal and CEO of Stamford School in Lincolnshire. He also ran international schools in Hong Kong and Dubai

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