Money saving tips for schools

[Honeymoonmummy]

Hi all, I'm a school governor and we are meeting up next week to discuss ways the school might be able to save costs in the current economic climate. Does anyone have suggestions of things that have worked at their school, no matter how big or small in monetary value? It's a catholic primary school if that makes any difference. Many thanks in advance

Counting out exercise books and rationing pencils are not going to make a big impact to the budget. To do that you need to trim your biggest costs and make sure you are getting every pound of funding, including pupil premium, you are entitled to.

Staffing is always going to be the biggest cost. If things are desperate then redundancies may be necessary but should only be an absolute last resort. In recent years TA provision has been reviewed and the headcount reduced in my school. We have also have between 9 and 12 classes dependent on numbers and that reduces teachers.

As pp say, renegotiating contacts and suppliers to save money can help. We have had big savings by changing energy supplier.

How easy is it for your parents/carers to claim PP at your school? How often do the reminders go out? If it's too hard to apply some people just won't bother.

Our after school club makes a reasonable amount of money for us but charges a low cost to parents. We also get a small income from hiring out the hall to exercise classes, Slimming World and school holiday clubs. It's not loads of money - about £12,000pa for the whole lot. Or a third of a teacher

That's not to say having a general green agenda where resources are used carefully isn't sensible. Power use, in particular, can make a significant difference to energy bills. Are things being switched off at night? Fans and air con are some of the worst for consuming electricity and lots of small screens left on add up to a reasonable amount of use over a year... but it's a drop in the ocean compared to the other stuff.

Just remembered one school (secondary) had all their exercise books hole punched, they also punched all handouts so they could be put in books with treasury tags rather than glue. It must save a fortune on glue sticks.

I also think hard decisions need to be made re unpopular subjects at GCSE and A level. At my DS's school, there are some exam subjects where less than 10 pupils have opted to take certain subjects at GCSE and less than 5 at A level. Sorry, but that's not sustainable, especially when other exam subjects have 30 pupils per class, even at A level. It's not a small school, either, with a roll of 170 per year group and 400 in the sixth form. If some subjects are consistently unpopular, year on year, then they need to be taken off the options list.

Staffing costs may be the biggest element, but other costs are also significant and massive savings can be made. DS's school accounts show total spending of £7m, of which £5m is staff, £1m premises and £1m "other". So, assuming you can ring fence the staff costs, you still have £2m where savings can be made. Even a saving of 10% of that, which in my experience is feasible, that's £200k so say 6 teachers saved. It's not difficult to save 10% overall. Of course, some things can't be reduced like rates & water, but savings of 25% are easily achievable by switching suppliers for insurance, power, telecoms, etc. Of course, saving one book or box of pens is trivial, but if every teacher does it for every class, you're soon up to tens of thousands overall. Look after the pennies etc etc!

Can you ask parents for donations? You educate their children the least they could do is pay whatever they can afford for it.

You mean in addition to the taxes they already pay Ttbb? Sort of like private school by stealth?

How erm, very Tory of you

Another slightly left field thought is about optimising class sizes.

If you're not at full capacity could you share staff resource between classes?

At my youngests school they used to have 1 teacher and 1 TA per class (high pupil premium and believe me in some of the classes its really needed). My sons class had 15 pupils, teacher, HLTA plus and an extra TA because of a child with additional needs. I'm sure resource could have been shared to cover sick, prep, extension and catch up work elsewhere in school with careful planning.

Sometimes staffing systems evolve and work so aren't actually planned or tweaked.

MovingOnUp

So what do you do when you've changed suppliers, cut down on everything, and still need to find £65k because you are one of the lowest funded school in the area?
When you've increased your roll (because you are good) and you get a princely sum of £25 because the LA took it away to fund the underfunded special school provision.
Or when each special needs child who needs a TA costs you £6k and you only get funded just over £3k per child.
Oh and you won't get fairer funding because all the schools funded more lobbeyed not to lose and effectively fairer funding was scrapped the day after the Referendum?
We can't combine classes because we are pretty much full.
Sorry, v tense meeting with head yesterday (who incidentally buys the school stuff out of her own pocket).

So what do you do when you've changed suppliers, cut down on everything, and still need to find £65k because you are one of the lowest funded school in the area?

Find new sources of income. One of my clients rents a school gym for her dance school - that's £12k per year in rent alone, and the dance school pupils also buy drinks/snacks from the vending machine. Our local football club pay to use the grounds/car park of the primary school just down the road for match day parking. DS's school rent an entire site for Summer camps - tents/caravans in the grounds, outside fields for sports activities and then use the halls/rooms for inside activities. Several model railway exhibitions are held in school halls/gyms. Our village primary school also rent out a small side room just off reception to a couple of local tutors for evening and weekend lessons at a tenner per hour. Even a small primary could probably raise £10k per year to rent out their facilities, and a decent sized secondary school, more like £25k p.a.

Another one I've just remembered. DS school orders in the "extras" such as optional text books and calculators etc to sell to parents. They sell them at or near the price per Amazon etc, but get discounts due to numbers ordered, so can make a profit of a pound or so on each item they sell. It soon mounts up and is really money for nothing as lots of parents will just buy CGP revision books etc online otherwise.

Nice sentiment but where do you find the people to rent rooms in a rural village primary which is opposite the village hall when said village hall has had a drop in people renting their space?
And whose job is it to find these renters when everyone is so pushed?
Sorry I'm just fed-up today. Governors are volunteers and many of us (including me) have day jobs as well.

Shouldn't you just actually be funded enough to you know...Actually fund a school?
Why do schools have to pay the apprentice levy when we get no benefit from it whatsoever?
Why do we pay business rates?

Crikey, don't start asking sensible questions about the utter nonsense of public sector funding. Where will it end?!

Sorry sheer frustration. Volunteers shouldn't be waking up in the middle of the night worrying about this.

I hear you. It's scandalous.

And to make up for my moaning - do you do easyfundraising?

I think that efforts asking for donations of objects need to be carefully targeted, as schools can suffer from the 'Wouldn't a school like that?' syndrome and before you know it, you end up with cupboards full of un-useable junk.

Room lettings - yes, this can be a winner.

Playground parking - good idea in theory, not so good if cars reverse into expensive play equipment or leave oil spots around.

Pupil premium - yes, try to max this out.

Volunteers - can be quite high in management time and can't really replace paid roles.

I also think hard decisions need to be made re unpopular subjects at GCSE and A level

Don't disagree but as an MFL teacher, I have faced my subject being axed several times. I sat in a class of 4 for A Level some 30 years ago now - nothing has changed. Except, perhaps, Brexit and the Government really needs to get all of its bloody ducks lined up in a row. Uni language departments are closing. Where does that leave us as a country, an island, on our own?

Thanks all some fantastic ideas and I agree we shouldn't have to be having this discussion in the first place. What's easy fundraising? And how do you find out about sources of grants?

Re hiring the hall/ school, this has been mentioned in the past and the concern is that we would need to have the whole school open in order for people to use toilets, which creates a theft / data protection risk.

We charge extra if they want to use the loo with their hall booking. It's usually only hired for an hour or two at a time.

We also have locks on the doors to corridors and the offices as well as rooms so we can easily close off parts of the school. Plus good data protection practices.

www.easyfundraising.org.uk/?gclid=CjwKCAjw3rfOBRBJEiwAam-GsKVUc5fRJ4FyFJatR2bN6jodiv_AoxfRnYXS6718fbguk6hgcJ0vNRoCF3QQAvD_BwE

Donations given for shopping. Not massive but you know....every little helps...

Any Chair of Governors on here? Anyone fancy writing a joint letter to the Times?

Hmm, I think people do need loos in any public space. But I can see that the ease of access would depend on your layout.

This explains why the traditional village hall is easier to rent out! Loos, kitchen etc all built in.

IF you are short on certain materials, either. Buy It from amazon (cheaper) or put up a list of what is needed and ask the local public to help? Back when I had more money, I would have been happy to look at a list of stuff and simply order it for our local school.