Access Education Budgets and Tower Hamlets Council
Increasing efficiency by empowering headteachers
Balancing the dynamic and ever changing budgets of a busy London borough’s maintained schools is no challenge for Access Education Budgets
- Access Education Budgets
- Access Education Finance
Challenge
- Council finances under greater scrutiny than ever before
- Budgeting conducted using paper and spreadsheets
- School staff under pressure
Approach
- Budgeting software initially introduced to handful of schools within borough
- Gains in efficiency and budgeting transparency mean buy-in from headteachers and school business managers
- Successful proof of concept means software is being rolled out to remaining schools within local authority
Results
- Headteachers budgeting and scenario planning seamlessly alongside existing workload
- Removed single point of failure to make budgeting more robust across entire borough
- Schools successfully using budgets now introducing Access Education Finance
The software has massively improved budgeting efficiency across maintained schools in the borough
Overcoming issues
Like many local authorities across the UK, Tower Hamlets Council’s school budget is under greater scrutiny than ever before due to cuts and wider economic pressures.
Managing the school’s budget is no easy task at the best of times, but in a post-pandemic world where student numbers constantly fluctuate, budgets are even more stretched as families migrate away from cities and schools lose vital funding.
Local authority maintained schools reliant on school staff to manage their finances also makes a challenging situation more complex, as headteachers do not come from financial backgrounds and their workload is heavy.
Adoption
It’s safe to say that with all the challenges presented to council run schools, they required a simple and reliable school budgeting software to manage their finances effectively.
It’s likely to be a familiar story in many council boroughs, but in Tower Hamlets schools, school business managers are too busy dealing with the operational and administrative side of running schools to help with financial planning, so it’s down to head teachers alone to manage budgets.
“We needed a budgeting software that is simple and does the job quickly” says Suhal Kadir a member of the Corporate Finance team at Tower Hamlets Council. “We wanted to empower our headteachers to budget effectively. We needed move away from spreadsheets but not increase the administrative burden of busy school staff –Access Education Budgets does just that”.
It’s as easy as managing your own bank account
Tower Hamlets have worked with Access for over ten years now and Access Education Budgets has been implemented in the majority of its 78 maintained schools, with it being gradually rolled out to the remainder within the borough. “We are a busy council and the needs of schools are always shifting. Roll out of the budgets software is a slow but gradual process and those schools now using it are reaping the rewards” says Suhal. “Headteachers are able to just get on with what they need to do without interference from the council. Teachers using the software can produce a multitude of reports which make auditing and reporting back to the central team a breeze”
Cloud-based software removes any of the risk associated with spreadsheets, staff turnover and doing aspects of budgeting manually
Results
Access Education Budgets has relieved the pressure on school business managers, headteachers and council staff within Tower Hamlets. The software improves budgeting transparency that was made difficult when using spreadsheets. Head teachers can now conduct scenario planning over 3 to 5 years, which is invaluable due to the changing nature and funding levels of the Tower Hamlets schools’ budgets.
As a result of the success with the budgeting software, Tower Hamlets is now looking to trial Access school finance software in schools under its authority as well, with an eventual aim to get all schools onboard. “The demands of a busy local authority schools department means this process is gradual, but with Access’ ongoing support and training I have no doubt we will continue to see successes”.
