Creating Value In Schools
Risk management. It's not exactly a phrase that gets people excited. For many school leaders, it conjures images of a dense spreadsheet reviewed once a year, a set of lozenges shuffled around a PowerPoint slide, or an item buried at the bottom of a governors' agenda when everyone is ready to go home. But what if risk management – done well – is actually one of the most powerful strategic tools a school has? That's the argument Helen Burge and Emma Gray, the Unbound SBLs, make in our podcast episode on reconsidering risk. Read on and see if you agree! Helen Burge: Risk management is important because it helps us strategically navigate an organisation, from school development plan to the outcomes that it wants to achieve. It's embedded in every decision we make. One of the dangers is that we think it's a risk assessment and that it's only a paper exercise. But if you fall into that trap, you are missing out on the opportunity to navigate the organisation in a structured and considered way. It's a constantly changing picture. Risk is dynamic. Emma Gray: I think it's worth looking at it from a really positive point of view, because risk is something that everybody understands and everybody can feed into. A crucial part of governance is that they're looking at the risks, assessing them and providing that oversight for the executive teams. Risk is something that they can really get their teeth into and add value. Governors often say, I don't know about education, I don't know about safeguarding, I don't know about data management. Often risk comes at the end of an agenda. People are tired, they're ready to move on. But when you say, right, this is what we're trying to achieve, this is our vision. What are the risks of us not achieving that vision? That’s where they can get involved. What are the risks of this not happening? How do we then make sure that we keep those risks to a minimum? What are the risks this year? What might be the risks next year? It's a constantly changing picture. Risk is dynamic. Something happens, there might be a white paper or there might be a change in the demographic, or there might suddenly be an announcement that a new building development's going up. In one school that I went into, a huge housing estate was coming down to make way for a new building development, which meant the families were being moved out of the area. So there's all sorts of things that can suddenly impact a school. And that's where the risk management comes into it: keeping that weather eye on the community. Helen Burge: Quite often risk comes at the end of an agenda. People are tired, they're ready to move on. It's almost like, don't ask any questions now because this meeting's going to finish! But actually, that risk register should have been at the start, our top three risks are still the same top three risks, or actually there's been a change, and governors need to know this has happened. Also I would expect for the senior leadership team reports, for the business managers report, for head teachers report to be reflecting those risks. Emma Gray: So in a risk register you've got the strategic risks, the operational risks, and the educational risks. You could put three key risks in each section and then everybody can remember those risks. What are the risks of us not achieving our aims? Constantly thinking about those three areas, strategic, operational, and educational, really supports schools to move forward and enjoy the process of the risk register and their risk management systems. Helen Burge: So an example of a strategic risk could be falling numbers on role. Over time that's going to have an impact on your income and on your staffing structure. And if you can see it happening in three years time, you need to do something about it. Or have a plan in place for how you're going to deal with it, and then keep monitoring it when other things happen over time. So, say you know you’re going to have a falling role and you have to compress classes down and therefore staffing structure needs changing. There's time involved in doing that staffing consultation. It might be that you've planned it all and then someone resigns anyway and you don't need to go through it. But you need to be aware of what you need to go through to manage that risk, and to mitigate another likely risk, which is the damage that can happen to your culture because of a staff restructure or a change in the classroom format. If you’re not dealing with one risk properly, it could actually create a whole other set of issues for you to deal with. It’s the pupils and the community that will be the ones that suffer if you don't have those strategic plans. Emma Gray: Talking about key risks also leads nicely onto your KPI’s . Building on Helen’s example, if you can see that three or four years down the line there is a predicted fall in pupil numbers, then start looking at those KPIs. What's your staff turnover like? Can you anticipate the level of staff turnover over the next four years? What about some of those ICFP metrics? Monitoring those numbers, pupil numbers and how pupils move within the year, can really support how you're looking at the key risks and what assurance you need to put in to enable you to keep moving it all forward. Helen Burge: And to link that back to reputational risk, so if you know that your pupil numbers are going to fall in three years time, you might realise that your leadership team needs to learn about stakeholder management. We need to have a really solid comms piece in place. That might involve putting some additional cost into the budget to get some comms support, specifically about managing the school's reputation through a change management process. Sometimes stakeholders feel that they haven't been listened to, haven't been brought into the conversation early enough. But you can try and mitigate that early on. People are still going to be upset, but you might have less people upset and they might not feel inclined to talk about it on social media, because actually they know that they have been communicated with and they’ve had the opportunity to raise it directly with senior leaders. So, when you’re considering an issue, you need to look at all types of risk. The first step is deciding what your vision is, but the second step definitely should be risk. Emma Gray: That’s why risk should be informing your planning. It's the very first thing you think about: what are we doing here? And then, what are the risks of us not achieving our aims? The first step is deciding what your vision is, but the second step definitely should be risk. Everything else feeds down from that. Because if things go wrong, eventually it will impact the pupils in the school, in terms of resources or staffing. It’s the pupils and the community that will be the ones that suffer if you don't have those strategic plans. And that's what the governors are there for, to keep that eye on the community as a whole and the school in its community. Having previously worked as executive business leaders in trusts, both Emma Gray and Helen Burge now support school business leaders through coaching, training and consultancy. They are fans of risk management, internal scrutiny and sustainability. Listen to the full episode (33 minutes) More on risk More from the Unbound SBLsNavigation, not a paper exercise
A crucial part of governance
A moving picture, not a closing item
Example: falling numbers on role
Risk-informed planning
What next?
