School business managers

[parabelle]

What do you think of them? Anything they do well? That brings value to the school? What could they do better? Waste of time?
DH is applying to be one, but the JD is very broad, just wondered what they really do.

Anyone?

Mine is worth her weight in gold. She does all procurement & budget management. Manages the admin/site staff and generally runs the 'non-education' side of the 'business'.

Job description will be broad as the role can encompass so much. Think in terms of finance management, personnel management, premises/building/project management,health and safety, managing support staff/contract management, ICT commissioning and management and anything else involved in the business of running a school except the curriculum. Basically allows the head to concentrate on teaching and learning whilst the business manager looks after everything else.

Unbelievably wide range of responsibilities, and a huge amount of health and safety and process management.

Make sure he checks the terms of his contract though, most non teaching staff don't get paid for holidays, it's pro-rata.

Just what dajen and HedgeHogGroup said. DH couldn't manage without his and ours keeps our school going. A good school business manager is invaluable.

Admin staff often don't get school holidays off - ours and DH's BMs both work during the holidays. Ours does reduced hours and has 5 weeks paid holiday which has to be taken during the holidays.

Make sure he's applying to one where position is respected, member of SLT and head is not a despot

It is vital that the business manager respects education. Not all do. They might fancy themselves as being on par with the head teacher, but this means they need to understand the minutae of public exams protocols, risk assessments with children involved, inspection protocols, etc.

Im a Business Manager at a primary so responsible for everything thats not teaching and learning, so finance, HR, admin, marketing, secretarial.
Its a very interesting job but you have to have a very wide range of skills. Its in effect like running a medium sized business.