The thesis behind this report is simple: just as there are a hundred ways of teaching a lesson in the classroom, so there are a hundred ways of organising a school office. The problem is that traditionally the focus of the school has been on what happens in the classroom, while the school office has been treated as something that is as it is. Because of this, school administration has tended to evolve quite slowly, while teaching and learning have undergone radical transformations.

However, observation suggests that different schools do organise their administrations in different ways, and that some approaches can make a significant difference to the effectiveness and efficiency of the school's work.

At the heart of the book is the notion that there is a way of organising school administration that is much more effective than any other approach. This approach does not require a higher budget; it simply puts in place processes that inevitably lead to a smoother throughput of information and activity, which means there are fewer disruptions, fewer errors, and ultimately more time for everything to be done. The report covers issues such as the structure of the administration of the school, work management within the administrative department, change management, facilities management, budgeting, organisational behaviour and legal issues within the school office.

One of the fundamental issues within the report is that changes only work to the benefit of the organisation when everyone understands what is going on and why the changes are being implemented. For this reason Increasing the Efficiency of School Administration is available as a photocopiable report, which allows you to give sections of the report to your colleagues. There is no restriction on the number of copies that can be made. An edition of the book is also available on CD Rom for printing out via Word.

The report, Increasing the Efficiency of School Administration, has been prepared by Tony Attwood, the director of the School of Educational Administration. Since 2005 the School has been running the Certificate in Educational Administration course, and this report will be valuable not only to students on the course, but also to bursars who wish to consider the effectiveness and efficiency of the administration within their school. Individual articles drawn from the book can be bought as downloads from the SEA download centre section of this shop.

Cat No: 978 1 86083 798 2