Being accredited by the SchoolMark scheme shows that your school or trust is operating with the very highest levels of resource management. But, on interviewing our SchoolMark alumni, some unexpected benefits have come to light. We wanted to share these with you as they deliver real hidden value.
1. It gives stakeholders confidence
Although not exactly a hidden benefit, going through the SchoolMark scheme can give everyone in your organisation added confidence. Being accredited as an organisation operating at the highest standards gives everyone involved a feelgood factor, and confidence that not only are they focussed on children, but they're part of an organisation that is doing the very best in managing and using resources. After all, every little helps!
2. It enables great conversations
The SchoolMark process uses documents that your school or trust should already produce so it's possible for one person to collect all of the information together and fill in the self-assessment questionnaire. However, one of the real benefits is gathering your trust's senior team together to look at the questionnaire and using it as a means of critically evaluating your answers to the questions. Not only does this help to get the best answers to the questions, but how often do you get your senior leaders together for a focussed discussion on your school's processes?
3. It helps you to understand the statistics
In education, we use a lot of benchmarks as a way to measure ourselves against other schools and trusts in the sector. It can be easy to become hung up on numbers but perhaps the most important thing is to be able to understand the numbers and why your numbers are the way they are. If your contact ratio is below the 0.78 recommended metric, do you know why and can you justify it? Is it due to the way in which teacher workload is assigned, or it is due to having more ECTs who need more support?
4. It helps trusts to grow
Trusts are being encouraged to grow – with the white paper indicating strong trusts are expected to have a minimum of 10 schools. When prospective schools are looking to merge, SchoolMark can be a powerful encouragement for them to pick your trust. As SchoolMark's focus is always on how well the school provides a quality education, they can rest assured that they will be joining a strong trust.
5. Your roadmap will drive improvements
Even if you don't pass the SchoolMark assessment the first time around, you will be given a "roadmap to success" which will assist you in becoming the best trust possible. Your SchoolMark advisor will develop a roadmap based on their assessment, highlighting areas for further work and signposting to relevant helpful tools.
Oh and finally one last thing! SchoolMark helps your school or trust reduce costs and make greater efficiencies in your budget, maximising spend to the benefit of your students and pupils and makes recommendations to improve resource planning.
For more information or to sign up, visit www.schoolmark.org.