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How can school leaders create a sustainable future in the face of falling rolls? · HFL Education

• 0:03
  Hello, and welcome to the HFL Education business Services podcast.
• 0:06
  I'm Catherine Loake, the director of business services here at HFL education.
• 0:10
  We wanted to bring you these podcasts because we recognise that the role of school leadership grows ever wider and ever deeper.
• 0:15
  And finding the time to unpack some of those core issues away from frontline teaching and learning is becoming really challenging.
• 0:21
  So that's where we come in.
• 0:22
  And this week I'm joined by Anne Peck, who is our director of primary and early years education at HFL.
• 0:27
  Hello Anne. Hi, Catherine.
• 0:28
  Thank you for having me.
• 0:30
  So Anne, we're going to be talking about falling roles, which is an issue that both of us are increasingly managing with schools.
• 0:37
  And I guess I wanted to start with talking about the impact of falling roles, because it strikes me it's felt really unevenly.
• 0:44
  There's a big difference, isn't there, between schools starting to see a slight drop in numbers and maybe expecting cohorts of 28 in reception in September, as opposed to schools that are looking at cohorts of 10 or 11, which we know are completely unviable so is it that the impact of falling roles is being felt unevenly and depends on the context of a school setting or trust?
• 1:04
  So I think there's there's a couple of bits to reflect their schools typically would expect to see some fluctuations in roles.
• 1:11
  You know, it's really unusual for a school to be full at 30, let's say in a year group or 60 in a year group all the way through all the time.
• 1:21
  What I think we're seeing at the moment is a real sort of downward trend, in the sense that we are seeing quite a lot of vacancies in our year groups, particularly in our youngest year groups, although that's now bleeding further and further up the school.
• 1:38
  And I understand from colleagues in secondary that that's starting to be seen in some of our secondary schools as well.
• 1:45
  So if where we do have the biggest gaps in numbers, if you like, then that's typically seen towards the youngest part of the school.
• 1:52
  Like I say, with schools that might have had in the past, quite big nursery and reception admissions and perhaps, you know, really just having a handful.
• 2:02
  And I think it's that the biggest difference I think we're seeing at the moment to what we've perhaps seen historically around roles, is that if you look at the GP data, if you look at the local population data, if you think about what's going on in our local environment and the demographic that that doesn't look like it's going to change anytime soon.
• 2:24
  And that profile of continuing falling roles looks like it's going to certainly in the foreseeable future, continue.
• 2:33
  I know back in the day we used to talk about multiples of 24 being viable class sizes.
• 2:39
  That's when we were on a growth trajectory.
• 2:41
  And we had, again a huge period of growth didn't we and I think schools are used to having full classes because we had this sustained period of growth and schools being asked to take additional forms on occasions as well.
• 2:52
  That was another element to it Absoutely and that was the whole it kind of premise of this 24.
• 2:55
  It was a bulge class.
• 2:56
  That's where we looked at multiples.
• 2:58
  It's really interesting because I think not only have we seen roles fall, but the context in which schools are working has changed hugely.
• 3:06
  The whole funding context has changed hugely because when we talk about multiples of 24, schools had surplus money, there was enough to go around and that isn't the case now.
• 3:15
  So in thinking about today's podcast, I went to talk to our business management services team about what's the magic number?
• 3:21
  If it was 24, kind of 15 or 20 years ago.
• 3:24
  Where are we now?
• 3:25
  And we concluded that there isn't a magic number when it comes to class size viability, but that the whole education system is now geared to multiples of 30.
• 3:33
  That's where the system kind of looks.
• 3:35
  So if you aren't as close to the money as you can be on on a kind of multiple of 30, you are really going to feel the pinch the finances are dictating, you have to take action Anne so what are the impacts of falling roll?
• 3:49
  Becuase obviously the budget is one thing, but we can't make more AWPU magically appear.
• 3:54
  So what are the kind of steps that schools can?
• 3:57
  What are the impacts?
• 3:58
  Presumably schools then need to start looking at organisational design curriculums.
• 4:02
  Where where are you advising schools to look?
• 4:04
  Again, let’s sort of take a step back from that one.
• 4:06
  So if you think about a school that's experiencing some fluctuation, there unlikely to feel a huge economic impact of that when we see bigger fluctuations and real sort of almost cliff edge dips, then schools need to make some really quite big decisions.
• 4:21
  And typically the first thing that schools do is they cut off the niceties, So that might be the number of trips that they're funding.
• 4:28
  It might be the additional adults that have been able to provide different clubs all those sorts of enhancements to the curriculum.
• 4:34
  Then typically, in my experience, schools tend to look to frankly, non class based staff.
• 4:40
  So to what extent can we maybe cut back on some of our cleaning.
• 4:43
  And I know schools where frankly, the teachers and the head and even the pupils are cleaning their own classrooms as a way of cutting back on the costs.
• 4:52
  Then it's about, okay, well, what can I do in the office?
• 4:54
  For example, what might I be able to do in terms of reducing people's hours in order to sort of get that budget?
• 5:00
  But ultimately the sort of the final step, if you like, the final place that heads tend to go to is to look at what's going on in the classrooms.
• 5:09
  And again, there seems to be a sort of pattern there, which is I look at support staff first.
• 5:15
  What can I do about support staff?
• 5:16
  So let's imagine a school where you've got a number of support staff who might be working some of them 1 to 1, some of them as more generic classroom based support.
• 5:27
  Okay, I'm going to keep my one to ones because I need that.
• 5:31
  But equally as well, as much as I might need that generic support, that general support, I'm going to have to cut that back.
• 5:37
  I might have to deploy my teaching assistants in a slightly different way.
• 5:40
  So when I first started teaching, you had a TA often in your class who was assigned to you for a certain amount of time a week.
• 5:48
  Well, that is quite unusual now, what's much more usual is that there is a bigger intervention strategy.
• 5:56
  And the TA perhaps is directed to the intervention and therefore is coming in and working with you on a needs must basis.
• 6:03
  And that inevitably then has an impact on the teacher and potentially on the class.
• 6:09
  And of course, the sort of work life balance of the whole staff.
• 6:12
  And then you've got that sort of final layer, which is the bit that, understandably, leaders are often the most reluctant to do.
• 6:20
  But is the thing that, in the end, makes the biggest financial difference, which is to say, well, if I've only got 14 children in year one and I've got 12 children in year two, I am not going to run them as two separate classes anymore.
• 6:34
  I'm going to put them together and make this class that won't quite even make 30 under that analogy, but will be a jolly sight closer and will really help me.
• 6:43
  And then that's, I guess, the point at which a lot of additional work kicks in around curriculum planning.
• 6:50
  Because all of a sudden, that beautifully well-planned, coherently thought through curriculum that's working on a year by year by year basis doesn't work anymore because you can't do year one twice.
• 7:01
  So you have to think about then that rolling cycle and what does that look like?
• 7:05
  And actually, whilst we used to as teachers teaching a class where you've got quite a big span perhaps of attainment in your class, it's really hard to teach a mixed age class and it's particularly hard.
• 7:18
  And I've said to you before, I think that year one/two split is a particularly difficult one because it's not just about academic issues.
• 7:26
  There's developmental issues in there as well.
• 7:28
  And you're some summer born year one is miles away developmentally from your autumn born year two.
• 7:35
  And how do you manage those two needs?
• 7:37
  And then, of course, we know there are some schools that then have to manage those classrooms across key stages.
• 7:42
  So how do you marry the needs requirements of perhaps the early years and key stage one if you're in, and there are a number of schools who are in that place where they're having to put nursery, reception and year one together just to make the books balance, It's unbelievably tough isn’t it, really hard.
• 8:02
  We both understand the reticence totally of a lot of leaders to sort of to go to that place.
• 8:08
  And I suppose that's where my next question goes to.
• 8:12
  You and I both talk to schools a lot about controlling the controlables.
• 8:15
  And this is just one of those areas that I think is particularly tough for school leaders, because you can't control the birth rate, you can't control the published admission numbers of your neighboring schools.
• 8:25
  You can't control the way the national funding formula works.
• 8:29
  There's very little you can control.
• 8:31
  Yet you're expected to somehow return a balanced budget.
• 8:35
  What can you control Anne?
• 8:37
  Again, you talk about putting a class of perhaps, you know, 11 and 13 together absolutely makes sense to have that mixed age class.
• 8:45
  But if your published admission numbers still say, 30, it only takes a couple of people to move into that class and that scuppers that whole plan you've put in place.
• 8:53
  So what kind of controllables are we talking to schools about?
• 8:57
  For me, I think there are four things that you can sort of get your brain around.
• 9:01
  So I think the first thing to do is to be proactive.
• 9:06
  So the thing you can control, if you see this coming and you will see it coming.
• 9:12
  Don't do that sort of proverbial stick your head in the sand and hope that someone's going to come along and bail you out one day, because it won't happen like that.
• 9:20
  That won't be the case.
• 9:23
  So you're going to need to do something, and you're going to need to take your governors alongside with you.
• 9:28
  So you're going to need to help them to understand why you're going to have to make some difficult decisions.
• 9:33
  So when, for example, a particular staff member decides to retire or to go on to pastures new, don't just assume that the right decision is to replace like with like take the opportunity.
• 9:46
  Be proactive in what you're thinking, because the little changes that you make earlier in this are likely to stop you from having to make really, really big, horrible decisions later down the road.
• 10:00
  So that's the first thing. Be proactive.
• 10:03
  The second thing is to be as collaborative as you can be.
• 10:07
  And that is a little bit counterintuitive, because we've talked about areas where you've got small numbers of pupils, and I'm going to compete with your school because there's only ten children, and I want all of them to come to me.
• 10:20
  So mine’s the best school come to me, come to me.
• 10:23
  But collaboration is one of the biggest keys out of this situation.
• 10:29
  And that might be shared procurement, shared staff, shared subject leadership, real innovative solutions.
• 10:37
  And I've I've learned that through my many years in Hertfordshire.
• 10:41
  We've got some gifted head teachers, some gifted staff who can be really innovative.
• 10:47
  I think the third thing I would say is you've got to if your school is moving towards a number on roll that is below 150, you are a small school. Yeah.
• 11:00
  And you have got to think like a small school, and you have got to get your mindset into a small school.
• 11:06
  And that will impact on your leadership structure and that will impact on what's going on in your school office.
• 11:12
  And that will, I think, make you have to think in a particular way.
• 11:18
  And clearly, I mean, there are some schools that are experiencing falling roles, but they're not becoming small.
• 11:23
  They're perhaps going from 2 to 1 in terms of form of entry but we have a thriving small schools network in this, in this county and get involved, talk to them and find out what they've done over many, many years to manage a small school.
• 11:41
  But I think the last bit that you have got to do is around stabilising the ship.
• 11:48
  If you've got your numbers, I'm imagining you sitting there and I'm a bit of a pen and paper girl on this one.
• 11:54
  You sit there with a pen in your hand.
• 11:55
  You've got the numbers of children in each of your cohorts.
• 11:59
  If you know, for example, let's take the same example I gave earlier, you're going to have to put year one and two together.
• 12:06
  Now, in that example, if you've got 28 children in your class, another three children coming in is going to push you over the legal limit for how many children you can have in.
• 12:18
  And that will scupper you in terms of having a sort of sensible curriculum and a sensible approach to class structure.
• 12:26
  So on those occasions, it's worth saying, right, this is what I'd like to do to stabilise the ship going forward.
• 12:34
  That the the process of reducing your PAN is a legal process that takes a long time, and you should take good advice over that from our colleagues in admissions at HCC.
• 12:47
  But you can cap year groups as well.
• 12:50
  And again you need to go to admissions.
• 12:52
  You need to take good advice because it's not as simple as just I want to wave a magic wand and I don't want any more children, thank you very much.
• 12:59
  It's what can we do?
• 13:02
  Can we cap the numbers in that year group so that if I do cap each of my years at 15, then I can at least have a structure going forward that is stable.
• 13:13
  And I think I'd probably add a fifth to that Anne, so you talked to about small schools and you're absolutely right.
• 13:19
  We have got some amazing small schools in Hertfordshire who actually deal with fluctuating roles year in year out brilliantly.
• 13:26
  But being a head of a small school looks very different to being the head of larger urban school.
• 13:32
  And I guess one of the things I see frequently is you're right, those those schools slipping under 150 into the small schools category, but still carrying the infrastructure of that larger school.
• 13:45
  And we've all been there having to make really tough decisions about organisation and people's jobs.
• 13:50
  When they've got mortgages to pay, they've got families.
• 13:53
  The cognitive dissonance that that creates is huge.
• 13:57
  But equally you cannot...so the art of the small school is that they are nimble and agile.
• 14:04
  And you've got people doing multiple roles in small schools.
• 14:06
  And it's hard, it's not easy.
• 14:08
  I think, again, as you said, those numbers are not going to be coming back up.
• 14:12
  Those birth rates are not showing any signs of bounce back.
• 14:14
  And we know for at least the next decade we're going to be having declining numbers.
• 14:17
  So there is a really challenging, decision for school leaders to take around.
• 14:22
  What is my back office infrastructure going to look like three, four, five years away?
• 14:28
  Because you're right, that's one of the first things that schools choose to cut.
• 14:32
  But actually, I would argue quite strongly that that is one of the more dangerous things to cut on occasion.
• 14:38
  Because once you lose that expertise from your office, you create lots of other vulnerabilities.
• 14:43
  So to me, again, you're absolutely right.
• 14:45
  There is a big discussion to have with governors where you sit down and look at. Right.
• 14:49
  How are we going to move the sort of model and the organisation of the back office over the next few years as well?
• 14:58
  And I think being proactive there as well is really, really helpful.
• 15:01
  And there's a big mindset adjustment, isn't there, when you're ahead who's had a business manager, you know, you've become accustomed to that.
• 15:09
  The thought of managing without one is frankly terrifying.
• 15:12
  The unfortunate reality and I suppose talks to that stabilising the ship type thing.
• 15:17
  Okay.
• 15:17
  This is this is the reality of where we are.
• 15:20
  What am I going to do in order to make that as manageable as possible?
• 15:25
  Because you're absolutely right.
• 15:26
  The job of a small school head is infinite, and the things that you are asked to do and expected of you are phenomenal.
• 15:35
  But on the flip side, small schools can be brilliant places to be and are brilliant places to be and offer a wonderful education and a particularly nurturing environment.
• 15:46
  And I think a really lovely family feel to them.
• 15:50
  And I'm not saying bigger schools don't have that, but there is something really special about a small school.
• 15:55
  Absolutely.
• 15:57
  And I think that's where I kind of quite like to go to next the opportunities, because we've talked a lot about the challenges that falling rolls present.
• 16:05
  And don't get me wrong, they presented some enormous challenges for school leaders, but also that license to to redesign your school to all intents and purposes must present some opportunities, particularly, I guess, with the SEND reforms coming down the track.
• 16:19
  So I know finances do dictate a lot, and we were having a conversation earlier weren't we about almost we're in a position now where it feels like there's a tipping point and we're almost reaching the point in education where the finances are dictating our educational decisions.
• 16:35
  And that's a slippery slope. But is there a kind of silver lining to the falling roles conundrum, and are there opportunities that schools could seize?
• 16:44
  I suspect if you were talking to a head who was having to make a long standing colleague, you know, redundant, they would say there are no silver linings to this whatsoever.
• 16:55
  So I, I wouldn't for a moment want to minimise that.
• 16:58
  What I would say is this is an opportunity to be innovative in your approach to things and to look quite literally outside the box and outside the school.
• 17:11
  And, and sometimes when we're put in some really difficult positions and in hot water, we realise quite how strong and innovative we can be We do your best thinking, don't we?
• 17:20
  Sometimes we do our best thinking, and sometimes where you end up is actually better than where you started.
• 17:27
  And that is, I say that does not minimise the horror of what you might feel you've got to go through in order to get there.
• 17:35
  I think the other thing I would say we've often used on the small schools program, that analogy of a small school being like a small boat, and one of the joys of being a small school head is how nimble and agile you can be.
• 17:50
  So if you sort of take that analogy on a step, as we often did, if a big school is like your lovely big cruise ship, that takes quite a long time to slow down and turn and navigate, your little small boat can be whizzing through, crashing through the waves.
• 18:08
  If you decide, as a head of a small school on a Tuesday night, that you want to do something differently, you can.
• 18:15
  Almost in some of the small schools I've worked in get everyone together in the corridor the following morning and go right.
• 18:21
  I've had a thought shall we do this?
• 18:24
  And quickly you can change things and quickly you can crash through those waves.
• 18:29
  And there's something really quite exhilarating about that.
• 18:33
  Really quite good fun.
• 18:35
  I think that's really inspiring Anne because I think, again, there's a lot of challenges out there in the sort of space we're working in the public sector, there's a lot of broader systems that are creaking and struggling.
• 18:48
  And I think that that idea that you can reimagine things and creatively solve problems is, is really exciting.
• 18:55
  And I think we are at a point where we're almost going to have to reimagine just education, because the kind of the pint and quart pot aren’t aligning.
• 19:04
  I couldn't agree more.
• 19:04
  I do think adjusting to falling roles is is beyond challenging for school heads.
• 19:10
  And, you know, no one wants to have to make those tough decisions about organisational design.
• 19:16
  But once you're through out the other side of that and it takes time to settle, they're definitely are opportunities.
• 19:24
  The family also that you can create in that small school, it's a really special, unique thing.
• 19:32
  And, you know, I can remember as a small school head, whole school trips.
• 19:37
  Now, when we would walk the whole school from one village to another for a church service, when we all as a whole school went to a pantomime that's really special.
• 19:49
  Yeah.
• 19:49
  And then back down to reality a little bit.
• 19:52
  You know, you and I have worked with a lot of heads who are literally having to sleep tonight, this conundrum.
• 19:59
  And neither of us want to see heads having sleepless nights.
• 20:02
  What one piece of advice would you give to a school leader who wasn't sleeping because they knew they were sort of faced with a significant drop of numbers for their reception cohort in September?
• 20:12
  I would say that you are not alone.
• 20:15
  That's the most important piece of advice.
• 20:17
  I think the job of a head can be a very lonely job if you let it.
• 20:25
  We are as a family of schools in Hertfordshire, and I don't just mean our maintain schools, I mean all of our trusts and everybody in Hertfordshire.
• 20:36
  We are a really strong family and nobody, nobody is interested in anyone else struggling alone.
• 20:47
  So if you are in that boat where you are sitting there and thinking in the middle of night at 3 o’clock in the morning, what on earth am I going to do?
• 20:57
  Contact someone.
• 20:59
  Your consortium lead your best friend down the road.
• 21:03
  Somebody here at HFL.
• 21:06
  We don't have a magic wand, and I often say that when I walk into schools.
• 21:10
  I left my magic wand at home today because believe me, if there was one, I'd have waved it years ago.
• 21:18
  But we can sit with you and we can sit beside you and we can help you.
• 21:23
  You're not on your own, And it's probably a bit of an element of fasten your own oxygen mask here, isn't it?
• 21:29
  I loved your advice about stabilising your own ship, and I think probably what we're looking at now is school leaders fastening their oxygen masks, kind of strapping themselves in, making sure that their school is stabilised.
• 21:39
  And then I think it's incumbent on your right consortia areas to work together with the local authority who have that sort of school place planning responsibility.
• 21:50
  Absolutely.
• 21:50
  Because they might have that statutory duty, but they don't hold all of the levers.
• 21:54
  But actually, I think you're right.
• 21:55
  I think it's about localities coming together now and saying, how do we manage this together?
• 22:00
  Because, gone are the days where the local authority can dictate who has what published admission number.
• 22:05
  So I think I think it's a combination of both.
• 22:07
  It's control the controllables.
• 22:09
  Make sure that you sort of done all you can do in your gift.
• 22:12
  Fastens your own oxygen mask.
• 22:13
  And then it's about working together as a collective to try and solve this, this problem which isn't going anywhere.
• 22:19
  Absolutely. Okay.
• 22:21
  Well Anne I think we'll leave it there.
• 22:22
  I can talk to you all day about this, but I think, yeah, we'll leave it there for today.
• 22:27
  I hope you've enjoyed today's podcast.
• 22:29
  If you did, please do like and subscribe.
• 22:31
  I mean, we'll see you next week.