Now you've budgeted for your staff, make sure you get value for money in whatever you ask them to do, says Sam Ellis. There's no easy way to do this, but an online tool may help.

Nobody's fool

I once worked as a jester at medieval banquets. Keeping a hundred people, who had paid good money to be there, entertained as they lost touch with reality through a combination of low-flying chicken legs and cheap wine was good training for teaching Shane and the space cadets on wet Fridays.

In true local style, the occasional lord was there under duress imposed by a partner or spouse and therefore had an inbuilt aversion to the more frivolous aspects of the event.

I remember several occasions when I was challenged by a deep Yorkshire voice saying, "Go on, make me laugh." My response usually made reference to their inherent streak of generosity, "You might as well, your money's gone now!"

What has that to do with school funding? In the context of the staff you employ from one September to the next the trick is to get value for money in whatever you ask them to do. After all, the staffing budget's gone now!

This idea, directing staff time cost-effectively, reminds me of one of the pet hates I had when working in a school: the pseudo-meeting. In contrast, real meetings were fine. They were either informative, productive in terms of communication or ideas or resulted in a key set of actions.

Sadly, many meetings I attended during my 36 years at the chalk and interactive whiteboard face were little more than an exchange of words with little or no perceptible impact on student learning.

No magic bullet

The direction of staff time needs to obtain the maximum cost-effective impact on pupil learning. I do not know of an easy way of doing that but there is certainly some useful material to assist with the task on the Department for Education website. The school development plans and budgets tool at www.education.gov.uk/b0069984/vfm/strategic-management is a case in point.

This free spreadsheet tool is generic. Based on a notional cost of an hour of an employee's time, the overall cost of the actions implied by your school development plan can be summarised.

I would think most schools might initially reject its use because it will not be immediately applicable. Like some of the punters at the medieval banquets, schools tend to have their individual characteristics placing almost all of them in the box marked 'special case'.

Rather than rejecting the tool because there is not a 100 per cent instant fit, I think it is worth an attempt to use it and then critically discuss the result it produces.

If nothing else attaching some sort of cost proportion to the directed activities of staff and judging that against the potential impact on pupil learning seems to me to be a worthwhile exercise.

The tool dates from October 2010 which is a long time ago in the current educational climate. The website comments: "Those schools that demonstrate good efficiency ensure that financial decisions are always made in the context of their development plans and equally that their development plans are costed", making the point that the rate of change in the current funding situation is bewilderingly fast.

Flat cash

Flat cash for pre-16 funding and post-16 rate reduction in secondary schools means a real terms fall in income per student in the coming years. The paradigm shift from a development plan informing financial decisions to the development of the school planned in the context of reducing funding is an urgent necessity. This concept also applies in academies as the government's declared aim of no financial advantage or disadvantage to becoming an academy is brought to fruition.

The declared purpose of the tool is to "understand the impact that their intended plans will have on the workload of their staff, the value of their staff's time and help them assess whether the actions are viable and cost-effective to proceed with." It will do that in a relative manner.

It suggests the cost of teacher time should be worked out on salary plus on cost divided by 1,265 hours. That ignores the fact that teachers work far more than 1,265 hours. In addition, the total cost of the expenditure in the sheet will not relate to your actual revenue expenditure.

However, it will give relative proportions that can be used to judge cost effectiveness. I expect any members who find value in this tool will adapt it to their own purposes.

Whether you use this tool or a different method to evaluate the cost effectiveness of staff time does not really matter, provided there is some management view of the result. After all, "your money's gone now!"

• Sam Ellis is ASCL's funding specialist

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