What does marginal gains in education mean?
Marginal gains means progress by degrees. That idea, of small but well thought-out operational improvements that add up to sizeable positive results, already has a well-known name: marginal gains. It’s a term that’s become familiar in all sorts of circles over the past couple of decades and simply articulates the notion that while little changes may not appear to be of much value on their own, when you view and achieve them together, their combined impact is really significant. In fact, given the right tools, you can make serious time savings, avoid pointless repetition and automate lots of tasks, to help maximise what you can get out of your available resources.
The education sector is feeling the squeeze
If you’ve been on the receiving end of sales messages that pledge quick and dramatic transformation, you’ll know these claims have their heads in the clouds, because they ignore the situation facing most schools and trusts today. It’s a landscape of seemingly endless budgetary pressures, compliance concerns, high staff stress levels and, often, outdated systems, to name just a few factors. In other words, the difficulties that teachers, HR teams and school admin professionals have to deal with on a daily basis are many and varied. Let’s look at some statistics that illustrate the friction being felt in a bit more detail.
Financial woes
Around half of schools expect to enter deficit this year – 48% of primary schools, 51% of LA-maintained schools and 43% of academies – with 86% overall saying that their budget is worse than last year.
Teachers’ wellbeing
Only 69% of teachers who qualified five years ago remain in classrooms, with nearly a quarter leaving within their first three years, given issues like workload, pupil behaviour and a sense of burnout.
Shoddy systems
With 40% of schools and MATs still using a mix of spreadsheets and disconnected tools to manage operations, education’s dated hardware and software set-ups can make them inefficient and frustrating places to work.
Next-gen IT uncertainty
The advent of AI raises all sorts of legitimate questions, yet 60% of Access Group customers state that they want to understand it and how it can help them with their current processes.
Despite figures and challenges like these, it’s worth acknowledging and applauding the fact that the vast majority of institutions in the education sector continue to do such great work for the nation’s young people in their early learning years. And at Access, we believe that a focus on incremental improvements could raise prospects and result in lots of fresh wins for hard-pressed staff and administrators at schools and trusts across the country. Because instead of pushing big, quick triumphs, we think graduated change can address the kind of challenges touched on above.
Easing the strain of talent management
Let’s sketch out a scenario in the area of recruitment – a significant pain point for schools and trusts right around the UK. Involving high staff turnovers, long lead times and admin-heavy processes, its requirements are particularly testing for HR teams and can regularly push them beyond their means. So if handling it isn’t about some giant HR transformation, how might a step-by-step approach play out? Well, here’s how a series of modest but targeted changes could make all the difference.
- Small but mighty gain: Instead of posting job specs manually across different platforms, use software that automatically publishes to multiple job boards in one go.
- Small but mighty gain: Instead of using separate tools or spreadsheets to track staffing across your trust or school, use integrated people management software that consolidates your data into a single, accurate staff record system.
- Small but mighty gain: Instead of having staff email HR every time they need to update personal or payroll details, let them use a self-service portal to do it themselves – safely, quickly, and at their convenience.
Seen on their own, these changes might seem to be small, isolated steps forward. But when ‘you do the math’ by adding them together, and even better, tally them alongside improvements to the likes of budget planning, reporting, payroll, procurement and more… well, the outcomes will win over any skeptics.
Because the avoidance of needlessly duplicated work; the advantages of a single, trusted data source that’s easily and instantly accessible; the benefits of enabling staff to do their own minor admin jobs in a flash? The sum total of all the time saved, mistakes avoided and workloads eased will be huge – and form part of a cumulative evolution of teams’ capabilities that’s well worth the wait.
Fresh help for financial management
Having just mentioned budget planning and payroll, incremental improvements offer similar advantages to those looking for ways to make control of their finance departments easier. With cost constraints so tough these days, finance teams undoubtedly need support to be able to make faster, more accurate and reliable decisions. But there are lots of great changes to be made in the finance arena too, as the following examples show:
- Small but mighty gain: With live budget tracking, you can pull all your financial data into one platform to get an accurate picture at any time – and without having to chase any spreadsheets.
- Small but mighty gain: Contemporary scenario planning tools allow you to overlay different hiring or curriculum models, then instantly see the financial impacts.
- Small but mighty gain: Integrated planning tools facilitate strategic financial alignment, bringing budgets into line with wider trust goals, which keeps costs down as well as improving outcomes.
And with a recent Education Insights Survey finding that no less than three quarters of education leaders now see integrated financial planning as a route to meaningful change, the leveraging of tech to help achieve that shift is surely going to be a large part of the equation.
Invest in real tech solutions that are implemented right
As you might expect, the kind of changes we’re advocating will stem from teaming up with the right tech partner. So if you’re looking for an expert outfit that gets education and the challenges it throws up, and can move you forward with a marginal gains strategy, we’d be delighted to have a conversation with you. As the quote below suggests, you won’t be the first party from the education sector to benefit from our technology, or our ability to help schools and trusts get the most from it, with a steady approach to success.
“The implementation process was really good. We felt very well supported.”
- Naomi Jackman, Head of Payroll at Aquila Trust
If you’ve misplaced your magic wand, why not dive into our fresh and free Marginal Gains Guide instead? It’s full of more statistics and information about what makes this such a compelling route for the many educational institutions we work with.
