Rather a hectic week…

Hi, all…

I’m still rather frustrated at not having enough time to get round our schools and spend time with the children and staff teams.

Most of my time this week has been spent looking at finances and our future direction of travel.

First of all I’ll deal with finances.

As many of you will be aware, our financial position falls into 2 distinct categories.

First of all is the the revenue funding. The money that our schools receive year on year. This equates directly to the numbers of children we have within our schools. As you can imagine this is very healthy. It’s financially really positive because every one of our schools have rising roles. They are very good and we are very popular.

This is a great position to be in but not without its challenges.

When we have such high numbers we face an ongoing problem of where do we place the children and young people to receive their education.

A couple of our schools are really challenged by this. The here and now – we’re OK 2 years down the line but navigating our way forward in the short term takes a degree of creativity and innovation.

Questions such as:

“Can we extend?”

“Can we develop a satellite centre?”

“Can we convert such a room?”

…have all been tabled and discussed.

Increasing pupil numbers also means we need a massive recruitment strategy.

By thinking about it now, we can hopefully avoid the present lorry driver crisis.

We have started to discuss whether we can we make New Bridge an employer of choice.

There’s a national shortage of teachers, support staff and senior leaders.

We need to retain the best and recruit well.

So, in summary, the money isn’t really an issue but effective planning is essential.

We’re excellent at being ahead of the curve.

We’ve built a reputation of being able to navigate the often complicated systems and make it right for our children and families.

Exciting times!

Have a great weekend.

Graham