"OpEx" practices a major opportunity for schools

Schools and trusts could see significant increases in operational capacity by adopting operational excellence (OpEx) approaches increasingly seen in the commercial world and other parts of the public sector.
 
That’s according to a new in-depth report commissioned by the Institute of School Business Leadership (ISBL), supported by the Association of School Business Officials (ASBO) International.

OpEx is defined as “the cultural transformation and technical enablement of an organisation that allows it to perform optimally and achieve its strategic objectives”. The report claims the approach could help to reduce and even eliminate waste from a range of tasks and processes over time. Examples of administrative processes that create waste include forms that take too long to complete, duplicate data entries and errors that result in rework.
 
Based on dozens of examples of operational excellence (OpEx) implementations in organisations from a wide range of sectors, types of work and levels of maturity, the report asserts “with confidence” that most schools and school trusts have a minimum operational capacity creation opportunity of 20-30% if they regard teachers and pupils as customers, applying improvements across their central functions such as finance, HR, payroll, procurement, contract/supplier management, technology services and estates management.
 
The report and framework will be launched at an ISBL hosted event on Thursday, 3 October, together with details about executive leadership and governor awareness webinars, a pilot OpEx foundation course, and a pathway to become an accredited OpEx practitioner.
 
The research reveals that just 20% of trusts have currently adopted the ‘OpEx’ approach. This creates a “game-changing opportunity for the vast majority of trusts and the wider sector” said ISBL CEO Stephen Morales.
 
“OpEx is the natural next step in the sector’s improvement journey,” he added. “At its basic level OpEx is about reflecting on what we do and asking ourselves the question: are there incremental improvements that can be made? OpEx is a major opportunity to improve if schools and trusts accept that there is an improvement journey to go on,” he said.
 
Stephen Morales said just a fifth of school trusts had already adopted OpEx-type approaches. This leaves the sector with a massive opportunity. “There are some green shoots, but this is often through happenstance rather than the deliberate application of the approach.”
 
The report insists that OpEx is not a complex methodology and that its power is in simplicity and adaptability. It is applicable in all schools and trusts large and small, adding that “consistent, committed leadership and a willingness to tackle old problems with a new mindset,” will be at the heart of its success.
 
The report includes a practical, hands-on framework for using OpEx approaches in schools and trusts of all sizes.
 
The OpEx framework includes a series of statements of what good OpEx practice looks like in 10 key ‘domains’, leading with its impact on teaching and learning, and including process and quality control, resource planning and deployment, and data performance measurement.
 
Examples of good practice include school business leaders and central function staff understanding that heads and teaching staff are their internal customers, ensuring that all processes are simply documented, understood and adhered to by all, and continually checking that every team or function has exactly the right amount of resources it needs.