Being a headteacher or part of the Senior Leadership Team can be tough of course – leading a school involves trying to meet the expectations of parents, teachers and support staff, governors, Ofsted, and even the local community.

To stay up to date with education news and best practice, and to remember that there are many others in a similar position, it can be helpful to get information and advice from peers and those who understand your role.
You’ll be aware of many great resource websites for headteachers and SLTs, but we thought it would be useful to gather some of the best into one place:

Headteacher Update and SEC ED

Headteacher Update is the only magazine that is produced just for primary school headteachers in the UK.
The magazine contains articles on leadership problems, best practices, case studies and other information and resources for headteachers. The offline publication is published every two months and is distributed free of charge to all UK headteachers. The website provides more articles on best practices, useful resources and news.
Headteacher Update’s sister publication, SEC ED, offers similar information for secondary education heads, SLTs and teachers. It has a wide range of sections organised by theme and subject.
Check out https://www.headteacher-update.com and https://www.sec-ed.co.uk/.

SSATUK

SSAT is a membership site for schools worldwide, offering guidance to all members of school staff. It has separate membership options for primary schools, secondary schools and special schools.
Membership gives access to resources on topics such as: practical advice for achieving compliance with Ofsted requirements, creating a long-term vision, encouraging student leadership, tips on how to implement innovative practices based on the latest educational research and how to better collaborate with other schools.
The organisation also organises training courses and events on CPD and other important topics.
A 1-year primary school membership currently costs £275.00 + VAT and the secondary network membership is £1015.00 + VAT (Correct in July 2015).
For more information, go to: https://www.ssatuk.co.uk/.

NAHT

NAHT is a trade union for professionals who hold leadership positions in primary, special and secondary schools, independent schools, sixth form and FE colleges, and other educational institutions.
Their website contains advice on topics such as Ofsted inspections, public engagement, performance tables, etc. They also organise training courses and events, and provide bespoke training for schools.
To get access to these resources you need to apply for a membership.
Find out more at https://www.naht.org.uk/.

School Food Plan

School Food Plan was created to help head teachers, senior leadership teams, and other members of school staff improve the quality of food served at school and help pupils enjoy food that is tasty, but also good for them. The website provides a ton of information about the impact of serving better food to students.
They also provide a complete checklist for headteachers with tips to help ensure that good, affordable food is served in an attractive environment, and that lunch is a time during which all children (including the ones eating their own packed lunch) can socialise and engage in fun activities afterwards.
The information on the website has the support of the Secretary of State for Education.

Michael Gove has made the decision that the Harnessing Technology Grant for 2010/11 will be cut by £100 million to contribute to the development of “Free Schools” nationally. This translates as an in year cut to local authorities and schools of at least 50%.
This suggests essential ICT systems will be unable to be maintained and improved – unless schools can find smarter ICT solutions, or use technology to achieve efficiency savings elsewhere in the value chain.  Here are some ideas worth exploring.

1. Switch your email exchange servers for cloud-based services
There’s a viable alternative to maintaining your own email exchange servers – services like Google Apps or Microsoft Live are free and both provide fully secure, branded virtual space for email, document sharing and storage. You can even retain your existing school-specific email address.  London Grid for Learning estimates that London schools have saved approximately £11m since transferring to Microsoft’s service last year.
2. Forget software licences – go Open Source!
Open Source software for learning platforms and e-learning content enable development and ongoing upgrade costs to be minimised.
3. Upgrade to the latest OS and save on power management
If you upgrade to the latest operating systems you will be able to take advantage of enhanced power-saving features, saving costs of between £23 and £46 per computer per year.
4. Switch to remote access
Microsoft’s latest operating platform (Windows 7) makes setting up remote access much more straightforward. Additionally some VPNs make use of free software packages that need no special hardware or software on the network to enable remote access.
5. Allow pupils to use their own laptops
Recent British Educational Suppliers Association (BESA) research revealed that secondary schools spend 48% per of their ICT budget on new computers. Schools may consider asking parents to contribute by providing their children with their own computers for school and home use.
6. Change the way you communicate
Like encouraging parents to provide computers, this requires a significant cultural shift. The way in which student relationships at school are formed and nurtured are being reshaped as hallways of classrooms switches to social networks on digital learning platforms. There are inherent dangers in students using social networking that need to be managed – however, safe messaging tools for use in the classroom and at home can be provided, enabling students to access multimedia resources in a controlled environment.

Following the spending review Webanywhere has released new pricing packages to help schools beat the cuts and improve their efficiency.
Our pricing options have been created to ensure that the provision of learning technologies to students need not be compromised to meet recalibrated budgets. By choosing one of the bundled suites, schools can make considerable cost savings compared with purchasing individual products.

Additionally, schools can look to make productivity gains by using individual Webanywhere products to change the way that existing services are provided. One example is Payschool, which enables schools to collect electronic payments from parents for school trips, meals and donations – providing longer term cost saving solutions compared with traditional payment methods such as cash and cheques.
Schools are facing tougher decisions than ever before to close funding gaps while maintaining quality of service.
WebAnywhere is 100% committed to developing new web-based technology solutions that allow schools to maximise their ICT investment while improving efficiency.

The NASUWT Teachers Union has said that trying to understand the full impact of the Education funding cuts at this time is ‘like knitting fog’.
Certainly, after the backlash over the scrapping of 700 school building projects, the chancellor announcement that there will be £15.8bn to “rebuild and refurbish” 600 schools should mean that schools won’t need to find this funding from other budgets – what’s your take?

The headline messages we picked out are:

• The schools budget will see a real reduction in Department of Education resource spending of 3% by 2014-15.
• 60% reduction in real terms in capital spending over the Spending Review period. However over the Spending Review period there will be a total of £15.8 billion of capital spending. The average annual capital budget will be higher than the average annual capital budget in the 1997-98 to 2004-05 period.
• Funding grants streamlined i.e. Education Maintenance Allowances ended; procurement and back office savings; 33% admin reduction in real terms by closing NDPBs, reducing headcount, reducing the costs of the DfE estate and cutting nonessential expenditure.

Next steps will include further details contained in a Schools’ White Paper, a Special Educational Needs and Disability Green paper, and confirmation of local authority allocations for schools and early years provision.  We’ll keep an eye in developments and keep you updated on further announcements that are expected throughout the next three months.

As school managers will be aware, the Department of Education has been asked to prepare plans for cuts of between 10% and 20%. This would come to between £5.71bn and £11.42bn.
While it is now widely expected that front-line schools budgets (those received from local authorities via the Dedicated Schools grant,or DSG) will be protected from the worst of the cuts, the full impact on school spending will require very careful reading of the detail.

Of particular interest is the impact on ICT investments within schools. The cuts inevitably carry some threats to the modernisation of the teaching and learning profession – some projects have already been scrapped, including education facilitator BECTA.
On the other hand, there may be opportunities for schools to save costs and increase efficiencies – particularly in areas such as cloud computing, open source and even the prospect of local authority collaboration to achieve savings through sharing resources and/or technology expertise.
Whatever the outcome of Wednesday’s announcement, many schools will be looking very hard at the small print before making planning decisions for their next budget year.