Welcome remarks from Catherine Hughes, Chief Operating Officer, Creative Education Trust, and Sarah Lovell, Director of Operations, Cabot Learning Federation.
Sarah Lovell
Catherine Hughes
Keynote address from Sam Freedman, Senior Fellow, Institute for Government.
Sam Freedman
Session details to follow soon.
Luke Sibieta
This session will include a description of the Operational Excellence Framework for schools and trusts and an interactive exercise that will bring OpEx to life.
Stephen Morales
In an era where data drives decision-making, understanding how to harness estate and energy data is crucial for educational institutions. This workshop will explore how digitisation can revolutionise your school estate, drive efficiency, and pave the way for informed decision-making. Our three highly experienced presenters will delve into the transformative power of data analytics in managing school facilities effectively. Key takeaways from this session will include, streamlining processes, evidence-based decision making and data driven spatial solutions.
Jonathan Coyles
Jeremy Pilgrim
Paul Stewart
Procurement with purpose for school trusts focuses on achieving value for money through sustainable, ethical, and responsible procurement practices. It emphasises the importance of green procurement, fair labour practices, and delivering social value within schools. This session will explore key procurement strategies include competitive tendering, contract lifecycle assessment, and schools and community engagement to ensure medium-term benefits and positive social impact.
David Shields
Session details to follow soon.
This session will look at using ICFP to enable objective staff planning discussions that support educational excellence, not school management via spreadsheets. In IMP’s recent CFO insight survey, “struggling to get buy-in from headteachers” was one of the main challenges that was found to be holding CFOs back from implementing trust-wide ICFP. This session will explore how ICFP, delivered well, should have nothing in common with ‘school management via spreadsheets’, but be a supportive session between curriculum and finance colleagues that enables schools to ensure they can deploy their resources in the most effective way.
Will Jordan
This session will explore how trusts can align operations and education to create a unified, mission-driven team. The next step for trust operational maturity goes beyond generating efficiencies and releasing time for educators, to contributing to school improvement; professionalising operational careers; and aligning all teams around the shared goal of improving outcomes for children. Join us to discover how fostering a cohesive "one team, one mission" culture can transform your trust, with real-life success stories from trust leaders.
Chris Kirk
What qualities do effective leaders of operations in education need and how do we nurture and develop people in these roles? In this session, Emma Hughes and Jo Marchant will reflect on their journeys into senior leadership and the learnings that have shaped their style and practice to consider how we build and support the next generation of operational leaders in our trusts.
Emma Hughes
Jo Marchant MBE
Opening new nurseries or extending existing provision to younger children are exciting developments that can bring huge benefits to the trust and its families. It can also present significant financial and operational complexity for the central team. This session explores the experience of the Lion Academy Trust, an 11-school primary trust that has extended nursery provision, taken it in house from private providers, and, most recently, set up a new nursery from scratch. Join David and Kelly to hear about the issues overcome by the Lion team, the opportunities created in their trust and wider community, and the insights gained along the way.
David Bond
Kelly Crawford
This workshop explores how trusts can generate substantial investment income with efficient and simple deposit strategies. It will consider what trusts are permitted to do, to help you understand the risks involved and the features of an effective deposit policy. It will also share insights from River Learning Trust on how such a strategy was implemented and the impact it has had to support frontline services in its schools.
Ian Buss
Benedicte Yue
At our last Finance and Operations Conference, we heard how Dixons Academies Trust was radically reimagining its business services to schools, and the rigorous foundations it had established for service transformation. A year on, we are delighted to welcome the Dixons' Project and Service Leads back to share their experience of implementation. Tom Rennie, Amanda Bailey and Orrin Campbell will set out what has been achieved in phase one, its impact, and the feedback received. They will also outline how and what the second phase will deliver in spring 2025, and their new approach to the continuous improvement of business services to their schools.
Amanda Bailey
Tom Rennie
This session will explore how to use data to get best value from your in-house or outsourced catering and cleaning services. Discussion topics will include the data you need and how to collect it, using benchmarks to track performance, where the biggest cost efficiency opportunities lie and balancing cost vs quality in service delivery. By the end of this session, attendees will gain a clearer understanding of how data can be used to measure and improve the efficiency of support services and receive practical steps to achieving sustainable efficiencies.
Mike Neales
Joe Parfitt
In this session we will focus on the Employment Rights Bill provisions to establish a school support staff negotiating body, which will make recommendations on pay, terms and conditions of employment, training, and career progression for school support staff working in both maintained schools and academies. Natalie, who sits on the DfE’s working group for this body, will explain the impact of the proposed legislation for trusts and will also consider the aspects which remain open to consultation.
Natalie Ruane