Alternative Ways We’ve Helped Schools Increase Their Budget
During the most recent funding announcement, schools were informed that their funding would be cut in real terms by an average of 1.2%. In practice, this means that a primary school will receive an average of £17,000 less per year in addition to rising costs.
This further compounds the 12% funding shortfall from the previous year, bringing the average primary school’s deficit to a staggering £185,000. The question is, without additional funding from the central government, how can schools bridge this gap?
Over the last 10 years of working with Primary Schools and MATs, we have helped them find alternative ways to increase school budgets.
Firstly, let’s break down the numbers into a more manageable format
Your primary school needs to raise £15,500 a month. Our top recommendations for achieving this are:
- Renting out facilities and spaces during non-school hours
- Expanding wraparound services
- Inventive outsourcing
- Parent support
While these strategies may seem simple to suggest, let’s break down how in practice they can help your school.
Renting Out School Facilities & Spaces
One of the most straightforward methods to generate additional income is by renting out school facilities during times when they’re not in use. Many schools have a sports hall, field, or general spaces they can rent out to after-school club providers or private businesses. The average wraparound care in England will pay between £10–£20k per year for rent for what works out as 4 hours a day, 38 weeks a year. This works out at an hourly rate of around £20 per hour. You can then also rent out the same spaces during the other weeks you’re not open, allowing you to generate rent 52 weeks a year. Holiday clubs run for an average of 10 hours a day, meaning an additional £1,000 per week.
Finally, there are many Saturday and Sunday clubs including local 5-a-side football teams who are looking for areas to play, train and operate their sports clubs from. Let’s call that an extra 5 hours a weekend or £5,200 a year.
This would allow your school to raise £39,000 per year so far, allowing you to not only cover the rising costs of the latest budget cut but also to reduce some of the other costs that have been slashed.
“What if you don’t have places you can rent out?“
Expanding Wraparound Services
Extending your wraparound services such as paid lunch clubs and sports/craft sessions after school will allow you to directly market to your parents and pupils and run the clubs they want while increasing your school’s budgets. Consider running paid-for lunch clubs. A 30-minute football club at lunch for £2.50 per day would raise an additional £14,250 per 30 children per year. After school, you could run the same clubs for 60 minutes at £5 per session, bringing in an extra £28,500 per year.
Should you manage to achieve all this so far, you will have been able to increase your school budget by £67,500 per year while offering a community hub for businesses, raising your school’s profile, as well as increasing fitness and participation in extracurricular activities.
Now we’ve only been able to solve 4 months of our 12-month shortfall, but this is where inventive outsourcing comes in.
Inventive Outsourcing
A tenacious and skilful school business manager is worth their weight in gold. They will be able to find creative ways to reduce your school’s outgoings, helping drive down your budget shortfalls. By running all these activities and renting out facilities, you may think that this is going to cost thousands in increased admin time, software and invoicing systems. iPAL, a system designed to reduce your admin time by allowing parents to book, pay, debt chase and invoice automatically, will allow for all the above to be done, including having people book out your facilities for as little as £39.99 a month.
When purchasing software packages like iPAL, make sure you’re getting the most out of their features, especially the features included for free such as parents’ evening, communication, photo/video sharing and accident forms.
Many schools fall into the trap of paying for software for a specific job and not considering the whole suite of services offered.
- Accident form software – £450
- Parents’ evening software – £399
- Communication software – £300
- Generic bookings software – £600
The total of these is £1,749 per year. Add in the cost of bad debt to the school, financial reporting, admin time and training costs vs iPAL doing all this for you with free lifetime training at £39.99 a month. On top of this, if you factor in the savings on paperwork and printing costs that iPAL saves our average primary school (1p per piece of paper and 3p per B&W print), this works out at an extra saving of £600, if you only send 1 invoice and 1 newsletter per month with only a few pupils losing these on the way home!
Factor in the average time saving of 9 hours a week with iPAL and you’re starting to make a big saving across the year for your school.
Reducing Coaching Costs
Not only this, but by removing outsourced PE coaches and using iPEP, you will save an additional £7,600 a year while being able to offer a great new set of skills to your teachers and bring some fun back to PE.
Let us do a quick stock take of where we are currently at
| Income Solution | Amount |
|---|---|
| Facility Rentals | £39,200 |
| Clubs/Wraparound Income | £42,750 |
| Admin & Software Savings | £7,137 |
| PE Coach Cost Reduction | £7,600 |
Current Budget Change: +£96,687
We’re halfway there and most of the easy solutions have been taken at this point!
Leveraging Group Buying Power
Schools’ purchasing power is only as strong as the group behind it. This means that if you are buying something for just your school, you won’t have as much leverage as a trust. Even so, many trusts forget to push for unified systems throughout their network and as such lose their buying power. If you’re not part of a trust, try to group together with other schools in your local area to push for additional discounts. On average, it’s believed that schools would be able to save around £5–£10k per school across energy, waste, software and supplier costs by negotiating as 3 or more schools.
Organising Fundraising Events
Summer and winter fairs can be a good money maker for your school. However, less affluent areas often struggle raising the average £20 per pupil (£5,600 per event) that some areas make. To increase your revenue at these events and hit a wider local audience, look at entering into revenue-sharing agreements or renting spots to local suppliers (e.g. food vans or children’s sports clubs). This could see you hit or surpass the target goal of £20 per pupil!
Engaging Parents & the Local Community
Getting families involved with the school not only increases parent engagement and school attainment but also helps you slash your costs. The average painter and decorator for a school charges around £20 per square metre. With the average classroom being 55 square metres, this works out at £1,100 per classroom. Consider asking parents to help repaint the school. This would reduce the cost substantially, with the only expenses being bulk-buying the paint, equipment, and providing parents’ lunch! The cost for 11 litres of paint (needed to do 1 classroom) plus equipment would cost the school around £200. Across your full school, this could save nearly £20,000 on average and also gives you access to parents’ and pupils’ hidden talents.
This could also allow your school to take advantage of the local support for your school with local businesses offering to provide sponsorship or old equipment such as IT equipment, sports equipment, art supplies and more.
Let’s value this at a conservative saving and income boost of £10,000.
Setting Up a Second-Hand Uniform Shop
Consider opening a second-hand uniform shop on site. This would allow parents to return outgrown clothing that is still in good condition (including shoes) for the school to resell at lower prices. On average, this could increase a school’s budget by £1,500.
Offering After-Hours Tuition
If you have had some teachers recently retire, or teachers with the passion and determination that cannot be matched, consider offering after-hours tuition. The average hourly rate is £30 per hour. Assume you have 10 children taking part in the weekly class, this would generate an additional £9,120 (after costs).
“Now we’re down to our final missing £35,000 in the budget.“
Optimising VAT & Subscription Management
Try to keep a detailed log of all software licences, applications, subscriptions and, importantly, VAT paid. It’s estimated that every year between £10k to £15k is lost through unwanted, duplicated subscriptions and missed VAT.
Adopting Energy-Efficient Practices
Make sure that your school is following all the latest and greatest energy-saving tips such as LED lighting and sensors throughout the school, adaptive heating, and annual cost evaluations of current utility suppliers.
Many schools get overcharged by around £2,000 to £5,000 per year.
Conclusion
By streamlining processes and using smart software like iPAL to reduce admin time and iPEP to cut planning and reporting workloads, your school could save the final £10,000 in overtime costs.
Adopting a holistic approach to budget management will help schools better navigate the challenges of rising costs and funding cuts.
The more you involve local businesses, families, and the wider community, the stronger your school will be, making you see your school’s academic attainment, financial stability and community support skyrocket.