When I stepped into the role of executive director of education at Consilium Academies earlier this year, I knew we had to move quickly.
The trust is built on a deep commitment to inclusion and improving life chances, but like many other academy trusts, we were contending with financial pressures of tight budgets and rising costs, inconsistent outcomes and a system where resources, both people and money, weren’t able to make the biggest impact.
However, what we didn’t want to do was make short-term cuts that risked long-term damage. Instead, we chose to rethink the system by focusing on what was working, what wasn’t and how we could do better.
Easing funding pressures
Doing this had a huge impact - within my first 30 working days, we delivered £2 million in trust-wide savings, and every staff member kept their job.
What’s more, the changes we made strengthened our systems, gave staff greater clarity and purpose, and helped leaders to focus on what really matters - improving outcomes for children. So how did we do it?
The biggest single enabler of this rapid improvement was our use of (ICFP). It gave us a way to look at finance, staffing and curriculum not as separate conversations but as one interconnected system.
That clarity helped us to uncover inefficiencies that had quietly built up over time and gave us the insight we needed to act quickly and with purpose.
What we found was surprising, but not unusual. Some staff were on partial teaching timetables. Leadership allowances weren’t always aligned with our current priorities or the complexity of student need, and in some areas we were planning to recruit for roles that, once reviewed, simply weren’t necessary.
These weren’t poor original decisions but ones made in a different context and then left unquestioned as circumstances changed.
Rethinking deployments
So we paused. We didn’t rush to fill vacancies, but took the time to ask the right questions: what are we trying to deliver? What does “good” look like? How can we structure our teams to achieve that without waste or duplication?
The outcome was a redesign of our staffing model, built around the curriculum not just the timetable. Where appropriate, we consolidated responsibilities.
We gave every role a clear purpose and ensured that time was being used with impact. Every decision was made with the wellbeing of our staff and students in mind, and, crucially, all changes were developed in partnership with our school leaders.
The result was not only £2 million in recurring savings by avoiding spend on new staffing or duplicated roles but also better deployment of people that made for a better way of working.
Staff knew what was expected of them. Leaders had clearer lines of accountability and students were benefitting from a more joined-up experience. ICFP helped us to balance the books and design a smarter, fairer system.
Furthermore, as we reviewed our structures, we also began to notice something else: funding that had long been accounted for but wasn’t actively being used to support our schools.
Uncovering ‘lost’ funding
One example was our School Condition Allocation funding. Because of quirks in how this funding was profiled and forecast, and how long-term projects were accounted for, a significant portion of this money appeared committed but wasn’t being used in real time. It wasn’t lost but it wasn’t making an impact either.
We worked closely with our finance team to dig into the details. By reviewing our capital funding profile and re-examining the assumptions behind certain allocations, we were able to unlock a substantial sum. Through careful reprofiling and reforecasting, we turned “stuck” funds into active investment.
We made sure every pound was put to work for our students right away. We redirected funds to urgent priorities including curriculum development, student support and estate improvements to help create more engaging learning environments that made an immediate difference in classrooms.
The lesson? Sometimes the resources we need are already there, we just haven’t looked closely enough or joined the dots between systems that traditionally sit apart.
Our experience at Consilium shows that rapid improvement is possible and it doesn’t have to come at the expense of your people.
With the right questions, collaborative leadership and a joined-up approach to curriculum and finance, it’s possible to unlock efficiency, strengthen culture and do what matters most: deliver for our young people. Smarter spending is about making sure that every decision we take helps every child to thrive.
Zoe Levitt is executive director of education at Consilium Academies
You can now get the UK’s most-trusted source of education news in a mobile app. Get Tes magazine on and on
