An easy way to SAVE £12k!

Since we began this campaign to demonstrate to schools how to utilise PEAK in order to make budgetary savings we have, unfortunately, heard from a lot more headteachers who are in the process of making more redundancies – the difference now is that we are hearing more and more from primary school about teachers being made redundant.

This is such a difficult situation for headteachers to manage as delivery of a high-quality service to their pupils is paramount and they are desperate to ensure that standards of teaching and learning remain high! A traditional primary school tends to have a class teacher who, apart from their 2-3 hours PPA, spends virtually their entire week with their class delivering teaching in every subject area.

What a lot of people do not realise when discussing the option of utilising third-parties to deliver specialist subjects is the HUGE cost advantages that outsourcing can have on your budgets.

Teachers are, by definition, an expensive resource (as they rightly should be). In the UK classroom teachers earn between £28,000 - £38,810 and for the benefit of demonstrating a working example I will use the lowest paid teacher salary of £28,000. The crippling aspect for your business manager or CPO is the dreaded ‘on-costs’. Due to the nature of teacher pensions, employer national insurance and associated payroll costs, schools have higher on-costs than virtually any other public service sector. The average on-costs for teachers tends to be at the 23% mark so the ACTUAL COST of taking on a teacher on the basic, lowest level of the pay threshold is actually £34,440. This works out at £181.26 per day minimum for every class teacher employed by that school (this rises to £251.24 for a teacher at the upper end of the pay scale!).

The average price for a day’s outsourcing from a specialist organisation is £125 – a SAVING of £56.26 PER DAY, PER PERSON.

So how can a school maximise this saving. The answer is surprisingly simple! Within your timetable you will likely have 2 PE lessons for every class, every week; other specialist subjects such as music or MFL are likely to get at least one lesson every week – AND THESE ARE THE SUBJECTS THAT GENERALLY YOUR CLASS TEACHERS HAVE LEAST CONFIDENCE IN!

So let us suppose that a headteacher has a class teacher leaving at the end of this academic year and is facing the prospect of a potential deficit budget in 23-24. They have two options:

1. Replace that teacher with another teacher and make ZERO SAVINGS towards their deficit budget…or

2. Bring in outsourced teaching to cover a full week (maybe 2.5 days of PE from PEAK; 1 day of a specialist music teacher and 1.5 days of a specialist MFL teacher) which will save them a MINIMUM of £56.26 a day…

OR A TOTAL OF £10,689.40 ACROSS THE ACADEMIC YEAR which could potentially be the difference between a deficit or balanced budget!

And we haven’t even factored in costs of cover for absence yet – which becomes the responsibility of the specialist company, such as PEAK, to ensure that they fulfil all of their contracted teaching days. (BTW good luck in finding a supply agency that actually has available staff in the current climate!)

We also haven’t yet factored in the associated costs of taking on a new member of staff which could include:

· Induction costs by a senior member of staff

· DBS costs

· Employment check costs by your HR team

· Uniform costs

· Training costs so that new member of staff has undergone the safeguarding/CP courses mandatory for your LA/MAT

· Cost of printing a new ID badge

This list is likely to be much longer for most schools.

So simply by outsourcing the equivalent of one teacher’s worth of your team your budget will likely be at LEAST £12,000 BETTER OFF! And the likelihood is that your pupils will also receive BETTER quality teaching in these specialist subjects delivered by subject specialists.

Oh but that’s not all (the business managers and CPOs will be nodding right now!) – every teacher that you employ requires ½ day PPA cover. Bringing in 5 days’ worth of specialist teachers (who DO NOT require PPA time!), in a single form entry primary school will have the additionality of providing ALL OF YOUR PPA COVER at no additional cost!

With a little creative timetabling, for example utilising a TA to take morning and afternoon registration for ONE class, you can:

1. SAVE £12,000 PER YEAR

2. COVER ALL OF YOUR PPA FOR TEACHERS

3. DELIVER HIGH QUALITY TEACHING IN SUBJECTS WHERE TEACHERS TRADITIONALLY LACK CONFIDENCE

4. HAVE NO CONCERNS REGARDING SICKNESS/ABSENCE

5. HAVE PUPILS MAKING MORE RAPID PROGRESS IN THESE SUBJECTS

Worth thinking about, isn’t it?

To find out more about our PE delivery options please visit www.peak-sport.co.uk/pe-delivery or to contact us regarding a discussion about how PEAK can deliver financial savings for your school please e-mail us at info@peak-sport.co.uk.