Bursars
Main text
Key documents
Best practice
Further information
Please see the Bursars website on TeacherNet for full details of the Bursar Development Programme summarised below.
Background
Charles Clarke addresses bursar graduates
Charles Clarke, Secretary of State for Education and Skills, recently addressed graduates of the 'Certificate of School Business Management' (CSBM) course at the National College for School Leadership (NCSL). Mr Clarke made some important statements with regards to the role of the bursar and their impact in schools in effective 'remodelling'.
View Charles Clarke's address in Windows Media Player
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The term 'bursar' is used here broadly, for convenience. But it doesn't matter what name bursars go by — 'school business manager' and 'senior administrative officer' are commonly used alternatives. What matters is that schools secure the managerial, financial, administrative and other advice and support they need from a skilled and competent individual.
The bursar role is a special one in that it is clearly a 'support staff' role, as ensuring the most effective use of all school resources is essential to supporting teaching and learning. At the same time bursars also have an important 'senior management' role in schools, as they are increasingly establishing themselves as part of school Senior Management Teams/Leadership Groups — involving strategic planning and risk management.
Why have a bursar?
The National Agreement of 15 January paves the way for radical reform of the schools workforce, enabling teachers to teach and heads to focus on raising standards by freeing them from tasks that can be done by appropriately trained support staff.
As Charles Clarke confirms, bursars can play a significant part in these remodelling reforms, bringing their expertise to bear on the planning and management of resources as well as taking some of the management load off heads and senior teachers. Bursars can review school management and administrative structures which are essential to remodelling, particularly through the transfer of the '24 tasks' and the effective use of support staff and ICT — see the Cutting Burdens website for further advice including a toolkit and good practice examples.
Regardless of how big or small a budget any school has, there are always competing demands and pressures. Difficult decisions need to be made every school year about how many staff there should be and what kind of staff they are. For understandable reasons heads and governors can find themselves adopting short term solutions, but in the longer run they may be missing opportunities to put there school on a surer footing.
Bursar training
The White Paper 'Schools — Achieving Success' confirmed the government's commitment to train 1,000 bursars by 2006.
To help us achieve this target we asked the National College for School Leadership (NCSL) to develop training for bursars and they have developed the 'Certificate of School Business Management' (CBSM) course. The course can be used to develop the contribution of an existing member of staff, as well as giving business managers from outside education essential information they will need to work effectively in schools. Two pilot courses of 100 places have been completed and the course has been rolled out nationally from April 2003 which will achieve the training target two years early.
We set up the Bursar Development Group to advise on the bursar development package. Members include the National Bursars' Association, the Independent School Bursars' Association, the Employers' Association and the head teacher unions.
Accreditation news- the CSBM has been accredited by the Institute of Administrative Management (IAM) leading to the award of the 'International Diploma in Administrative Management'.
Promotion of the bursar role
We have also produced the Looking for a Bursar? document which:
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sets out the business case for employing bursars to persuade more heads and governors that deploying a bursar, at a sufficiently senior level, is a worthwhile and cost-effective use of resources
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includes a flexible 'modular' job description / role profile encompassing the wide ranging aspects of the bursar role and the level at which these could be undertaken. This enables schools to tailor the post to their individual needs and circumstances and produce appropriate job descriptions and advertisements
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highlights the bursar training we have developed with the NCSL
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demonstrates the impact of bursars in a variety of schools through 'case histories' covering primary, secondary and 'shared bursar arrangements'
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has a 'headteacher's perspective' — demonstrating how the head made major changes to the way the school is run after the bursar undertook the CSBM course
Case Histories
There is no 'one size fits all' bursar — smaller schools sometimes club together to employ a 'shared bursar' who works with a number of schools and facilitates the spread of good practice for mutual benefit. We are compiling case histories which show how bursars are impacting on schools in a variety of ways — from the budget management example of 'A shared bursar in Nottingham', to the full school business manager role where bursars are an established part of their school's Leadership Group and have line management responsibility for all support staff, including Teaching Assistants.
