With today's difficult recruitment climate, retaining talented staff is more important than ever. Effective policies around wellbeing, workload and flexible working all help to improve staff morale and help retention, but at what point does staff engagement really start? The onboarding process? The interview process? Or even before candidates have ...
At Keystone Knowledge, we talk a lot about values. It's so important to have a good set of values, whether they are your personal values or your schools. They really do form the basis for everything you do, provide a framework for how to tackle problems and build a happy, fulfilling environment for everyone. If you would like some advice on putting...
2021 was a tough year for many and the Keystone staff had their share of struggles. Despite this, they went above and beyond to give our clients an exceptional service with measurable outcomes for pupils. Our vision is for every child to receive an outstanding education, underpinned by excellent school and trust management – and we like to th...
When Keystone was set up, we knew that we would primarily provide support to schools in a range of areas, such as HR, health and safety, auditing, and trust growth support. Over the past 12 months, we've been approached by a few school business professionals who are looking at setting up new MATs. Nominative determinism is the idea that people tend...
All schools, whether they are trusts or maintained schools, have a set of values that they aim to follow. The DfE and the ESFA tend to focus on the quantitative side of schooling with an overwhelming emphasis on exam or assessment results. Although these are incredibly important and help set us up to succeed in the professional world, they aren't t...
"Why do we do things this way or that way?" That is the question often goes through my mind whenever I enter a school or trust. Why is the status quo the status quo? Is it because it's the right thing to do, the best way to do things or the easiest way to do things? Academisation has given schools and trusts more freedom than ever to run as they se...
Checking social media and online presence as part of safer recruitment practices was introduced as a 'should' in Keeping Children Safe in Education 2022 and as we all know with KCSIE, a 'should' is really an instruction to 'go and do'. The process itself is quite simple, but it can be difficult to know where to start when 'online' is such a broad t...
The role of HR in the expansion of MATs is multifaceted and central to long-term success. As MATs look to expand, strategic and operational HR practices can help or hinder both the attraction of schools to the trust, and the ease with which they convert and are assimilated into trust practices. What is strategic HR and why should expanding MATs car...
With today's ever-tightening budgets, schools face the challenging task of delivering exceptional education without stretching resources too thin. HR isn't something that automatically springs to mind when looking for cost savings, but effective practices can save both time and money. Let's explore how strategic HR practices can help save costs. Re...
The latest version of Keeping Children Safe in Education (KCSIE) has been published and comes into force on 1 September 2023. The changes made in KCSIE 2023 are mainly clarifications on existing guidance – the key change that jumps out is around the implementation of the DfE's 'Meeting digital and technology standards in schools and colleges' (the ...
So, the long-awaited announcement is finally here! After painful strikes and heated debates, the government has given its full consent to the STRB's recommendations. What's in it for the teachers? A solid 6.5% pay hike. And the best part? It's not just a reshuffling of old funds but an infusion of fresh money that's fully backed. This is defin...
Standard internal scrutiny practices, including compliance checks against legislation and internal procedures, are essential for any multi-academy trust. They offer a critical check and balance, helping to ensure the trust's legal and operational health. However, what happens when these traditional approaches overlook hidden risks, those which lie ...
Internal scrutiny is an important part of your trust risk management and should be seen as a tool that provides reassurance, unbiased advice and strategic recommendations for your organisation. However, it is often viewed as a 'scary' audit where an outside company is picking fault with the processes and procedures in your trust. This shouldn't be ...
Internal scrutiny is at the heart of risk management, providing oversight of your management controls, reducing risk to your trust and ultimately benefiting pupils by ensuring resources are protected and used properly. The first blog in this series focussed on the steps for effective internal scrutiny before any audits take place. In part two, we'r...
Internal scrutiny can be so much more than a tick box exercise to meet a regulatory requirement. With the right people and a strong plan in place, internal scrutiny becomes an effective tool which provides reassurance, unbiased advice and strategic recommendations for your organisation. Here at Keystone Knowledge, we believe that there are seven st...
Recruitment in the education sector can be a challenge, particularly in the current economic climate. Retaining talent and attracting quality candidates to your setting shouldn't just start when you have vacancies, it's part of a long-term strategy. Your strategic thinking around recruitment should include: What will your team look like in a year's...
The Academy Trust Handbook requires all trusts to have a programme of internal scrutiny to provide independent assurance to the board that its financial and non-financial controls and risk management procedures are operating effectively. It's easy to fall into the trap of thinking that internal assurance in a trust needs to focus mainly on expendit...
"If you're don't like change, you'll like irrelevance even less." So goes a quote I read several years ago and became one of those screenshots that I keep on my phone. Brutal, but true. And as school business management continues on its inexorable curve of seemingly getting harder, it's ever more important that we can find creative ways of approach...
With the recent December 31st deadline to submit details of your internal scrutiny to the DfE (Department for Education), you may feel that internal scrutiny is not your favourite subject amongst the myriad of daily and monthly things to consider when running a school or trust. But what if you could change the narrative around internal scrutiny and...
The new Keeping Children Safe In Education report was released earlier this year. Although there weren't any major changes to the report, there some important additions. Our experts have gone through the updates to bring you this digest. Child-on-child sexual violence Sadly, child-on-child sexual violence and harassment is still prevalent issues in...
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