Balfour Primary School
Strategy Document
Date: July 2013
Date approved by Full Governing Body
Preamble
This document is designed to ensure that everyone connected to Balfour Primary School
understands the underlying purpose of the school and outlines Balfour’s vision for the next
five years starting with the academic year 2013/14.
It also articulates the strategy for delivering that vision, including targets for improvement,
and recognises the difficult financial environment in which the school will be operating, a
challenge made more complicated by changes already planned or underway in the
educational sector.
The Governing Body has decided that this is an opportune moment for the school to consider
how best to address the future through setting out a strategy which tries to play to our
strengths as a school and looks for opportunities. We are also cognisant of the need to
anticipate and mitigate events which could adversely impact Balfour and work on areas in the
school which need development.
At the heart of Balfour are the children. Their individual and collective needs and interests are
the basis of this strategy and the Governing Body recognises that choices have to be made
in a world of limited resources to deliver on those needs and interests; we aspire to get the
balance as right as we can over time between different, and, on occasion, conflicting
priorities.
We therefore set out here, in as transparent a way as possible, what the school is setting out
to deliver in the next five years, how delivery will take place, and the rationale for those
choices. This long horizon will also enable large projects to be compared and evaluated and
prioritisations made so that we can make more informed choices and fund those projects in a
way that hitherto has been difficult to manage consistently across the school. This document
sets out detailed plans in some areas while in others it describes processes to determine
targets and actions with delivery dates for those targets and actions. Accordingly, it is
anticipated that this document will be reviewed each year and be modified as appropriate,
with a thorough review happening during the third year of its life.
The strategy document will also inform the development of the school’s budget and annual
implementation plans which will set out how Balfour will implement the key improvements set
out in the strategy document.
I hope you find this helpful. Please let me have any feedback through the Governor’s school
e mail address.
Paul Brereton.
Chair of Governors
July 2013
Contents
1. Executive Summary
2. Introduction
3. Educational Improvement Plan
4. The Estate
5. Finances
6. School Governance
7. Partnerships
8. Conclusion
1.
Executive Summary
Balfour Primary School has established a vision with a supporting mission underpinned by an
ethos and a set of values. This strategy document is designed to ensure that we will achieve
those aspirations. The main points are:
 The school recognises the challenges, particularly financial problems, over the five
year period and sets out plans and targets for managing these issues;
 It sets out an ambitious agenda for increasing the quality and breadth of the
educational service we provide to the children with a clear goal of being recognised by
OFSTED as ‘Outstanding’ within the academic year 2016/17;
 As with all ‘bricks and mortar’ institutions, our estate is hugely important to us. It
enables the effective delivery of teaching and learning as well as facilitating the all
round development of the children. In recognition of this, the strategy puts in place a
framework strategy for the estate, providing a means for determining what we spend
and where how we spend across the whole school;
 The Governing Body believes that an informed debate needs to take place about the
future governance of Balfour Primary School and commits to supporting that debate;
and
 Partnerships are important, especially in as linked – in a place as Brighton, and we will
review how we work with our current partners as well as assessing who those partners
are or might be, to see how best we can bring value to the school through these links.
2.
Introduction
The school, as most organisations, has developed the high level concepts that need to be
kept to the forefront of the mind when considering and planning what needs to be done and
how things need to be done. These are;
The vision of the school is to aim high so that children feel happy and safe, recognise and
achieve their full potential.
The mission of the school is to provide a stimulating, creative curriculum that supports the
needs of all our children through high quality teaching, which encourages and challenges
pupils to be active, independent, reflective lifelong learners.
The school’s ethos and values are:
Respect
Equality
Trust
Courage
– to encourage tolerance and to respect the rights of others, the environment
and themselves;
– to foster a regard for justice and equality, to be considerate and act in a
responsible manner;
– to earn and build trust so that we can work and learn co-operatively, share
ideas but be individuals together, and trust that you will be listened to and
valued;
– to support our children to make brave choices, take responsible risks and
stand up for what they believe in.
These are essential platforms for the school as it tells us why people are at Balfour and the
key attitudes and behaviours which are employed in delivering vision and the mission.
Of course, these are necessary prerequisites for the school but they are not sufficient.
Balfour is a large school catering for over 850 children with over 100 members of staff and a
turnover in excess of £2 million per annum. The delivery of the vision and mission requires
an acute focus on the education and well – being of the children but this in turn is dependent
upon excellent and motivated people working with the children in both teaching and support
roles; in engaged and supportive parents and carers; in having an estate and infrastructure
which are fit for purpose; and in prudent budgeting and financial planning. There are many
other, perhaps less visible, features which need to work well and together to deliver the
outcomes we all want for our children, and the school will continue to ensure that these
receive the appropriate attention in the future.
Added complications are the educational and financial environments beyond the control of
the school which set the context in which the school operates. These are the two prime areas
the school will need to manage over the next five years.
Firstly, the Government has changed the curriculum and further changes are planned.
Putting to one side the rights and wrongs of this, such changes will always happen and the
pace of that change is accelerating; Balfour will need to both adapt to the actual changes but
also further embed managing change as a natural way of working in the school. The school
has already begun to do this in the way it is managing the current National Curriculum
changes and work will be done to help people take advantage of the change process.
Secondly, the school will soon begin to face a tightening set of finances as costs rise and the
school’s funding formula changes. We will work with the fantastic Parents’ Association and
continue to review the school’s commercial lettings and activities to partially offset this
problem but extra revenue is unlikely to fully offset the anticipated shortfall between income
and expenditure. Some difficult choices may have to be made but we have enough time to
consider those choices and make measured decisions if we begin that process now rather
than wait. This financial position will be taken into account in assessing the school’s strategy
over the five year period.
Having said this, Balfour is in a strong position to progress and deliver its strategic intent if
we plan now and organise ourselves to make sure we deliver on that strategy, and we
recognise the importance of the people who work at Balfour to achieve this.
3.
Educational Improvement Plan and drivers
Over the course of the last year the school’s senior leadership team launched several large
curriculum reviews of Literacy, Mathematics, Curriculum (Foundation Subjects), Gifted &
Talented, AfL & ICT involving stakeholders to ensure that the curriculum being offered met
the aspirations to build a first class centre of learning. At the same time teachers and
governors met to agree the 3 year overview of the curriculum.
In summary, the aims are as follows:
 Personalised learning for all pupils, recognising their needs, interests and talents
 A creative and inspirational curriculum that will engage and motivate all pupils
 Breadth, depth and acceleration
As a result of this, together with the impending Government changes to the National
Curriculum, the leadership team sought to look for a curriculum that would ensure the
following:
 Compliance with the statutory duty to ensure coverage year on year of the New
National Curriculum
 Underpinning the benefit of a skills based as well as knowledge and concept based
curriculum
 Creative and active learning with a cross curricular approach
Taking the principles above and after discussions with staff and other International Primary
Curriculum (IPC) - user schools, it was agreed to purchase this particular curriculum. Using
this model together with the strategies adopted for literacy, mathematics and AFL/marking
will enable us to produce a learning framework allowing us to raise our OFSTED
achievement from Good to Outstanding by the end of the academic year 2016/17.
To this end, we will:
 Be a data-rich school building on the ‘Closing the gap’ model using FFT & Raiseonline
information to project future strengths and weaknesses including the analysis of data
to identify underachievement, patterns and groups of pupils and monitor the impact of
interventions.
 Ensure that as well as core subjects, foundation areas of the curriculum are levelled,
assessed and tracked through the school.
 Continuously raise teaching standards to achieve 90% of Good or better with an
increasing 30% of outstanding teaching by 2014-15
 Be a learning - based community joining up AFL and Looking at Learning strategies
and ensuring consistent delivery of AFL, marking, literacy and mathematics
 Introduce a Modern Foreign Language (MFL) across KS2 in 2014-15
 Address international links with schools around the globe
 Manage attendance to ensure a minimum of 95% pupil attendance matched against
pupil performance
There will be many other initiatives undertaken by the school, including the provision of
funding to ensure that PE and sport are at the heart of school life. The focus will be on the
building blocks of locomotion, object control and stability while reviewing and extending
sporting opportunities and activities through coaching and teacher training.
4.
The Estate
The estate appears to be in reasonable condition and the premises have benefited from
recent major building work, yet there are three types of activity required to ensure the
school’s estate remains fit for purpose.
Firstly, maintenance work needs to occur to keep the estate in its current condition through
bringing degenerating pieces of the estate (or areas likely to degenerate without attention).
Secondly, refurbishment work involving more resources than those involved in routine
maintenance and focused on replacing and / or upgrading parts of the estate is essential for
both the longer term maintenance of the school and also upgrading facilities.
Thirdly, improvements are both the complete upgrading and renovation of the estate and its
facilities, or the introduction of brand new elements to the estate in addition to those currently
in place.
It is often the case that resources are made available for maintenance; some are on occasion
dedicated to refurbishment; and rarely are plans made and money set aside to deliver
genuine improvements. Within the first year of the strategy, the school commits itself to
determining and publishing the plans for the development of the estate categorised by
the three bands set out in this section. The decisions will be based on a professionally
authored assessment of the estate and its needs, an understanding of the importance of
development of the estate against other resource needs in the school and an appropriately
allocated budget. Most importantly, the investment decisions in the estate will be mapped
against the delivery of the school’s vision and mission; the more direct the investment in the
estate makes to the delivery of the school’s vision and mission, the more likely it is to be
resourced.
In order to bring greater cohesion and school – wide focus to the good work already
undertaken on the estate, the school will have in place by the beginning of 2014/15 the
following –
One maintenance review cycle across the school which assesses emergent needs
throughout the year. This review cycle will have a fixed annual budget.
One fire safety, risk management and health and safety inspection set of protocols
across the school.
A class refurbishment plan which identifies classes by need regardless of Key Stage.
This plan will have a fixed annual budget and is financially distinct from any other
areas requiring refurbishment.
An energy management strategy across the school initially focused on cost
management but to be developed to include environmental issues.
This approach should build in the need to view the estate as a whole school issue and
ensure that investment in the estate is targeted more directly toward to delivering the needs
of the children.
5.
Finances
Following the coming together of the Infant and Junior Schools, Balfour Primary is a large
Primary school both in terms of the numbers of children in the school and its budget, which is
in excess of £2 million. The school has managed its finances to ensure that a reserve is in
place each year to account for any unexpected payments which may arise, and an amount is
set aside for the depreciation of the ICT equipment so that replacements can take place
when the kit reaches the end of its life without causing a funding issue.
A particular challenge has been ensuring that enough financial resources are available to
meet the increasing aspirations of the parents, the children and the school and, keeping
within sensible limits, we have been able to deliver the money through husbandry of the
budget and with the vital support of FAB.
However, in the last 12 months financial pressures have increased so that we are not only
continuing to improve what we offer the children, but we have also started to take measures
to prepare the school for changes in the funding formula, changes which will result in the
school receiving less money from the State.
We have therefore established the objective of doubling the contribution to the school
of commercial activities from that achieved in 12/13 by the end of this five year period.
It is important to note that this does not mean that the school intends to double its income;
rather it is the profit from commercial activities that is key.
The school anticipates increasing its income through the following main channels:
a) Slowly increasing the charges on those currently using the school’s facilities over time.
b) Extending our facilities to new clients.
c) Developing new offerings that we can market to both current and new clients, possibly
in partnership with others.
The prime focus and the prudent way forward, however, is to examine our costs as the
achievement of the contribution target (which will be difficult) will only mitigate the projected
income loss from the Local Authority.
During 2014/15 and 2015/16 the school will continue the work undertaken in 2013/14 to
review costs and reduce these in such a way as to prioritise the delivery of education
to the children.
Finally, the Governing Body will ensure that the school will not be in deficit in any year
of the five year period.
6.
School Governance
The debate surrounding schools and their ‘ownership’ has been a live topic for some time
and has moved to the fore in Brighton & Hove with many schools, including Primary schools,
informally discussing amongst themselves where the future lies for them with regard to this
topic.
The Governors recognise that Balfour needs to have an informed debate about options for
the school to ensure that we can take part effectively in discussions with other schools and
the Local Authority about future governance.
The Governing Body will, in 2014/15, provide a series of forums and information,
primarily but not exclusively for parents and carers, to foster this discussion. This
process will help inform the Governing Body’s decision-making from the end of 2014/15
onwards regarding the future status of the school.
7.
Partnerships
Partnerships or partnering are loose terms and have been used generically to describe the
school’s formal and informal relationships with various parties and organisations. To date,
the school has often lacked a clear focus on what it gains and what it provides to its partners
and there is little prioritisation to ensure that in a world of limited resources, Balfour is
expending its resources to best effect.
The positive impact that can be gained from working closely with others can be seen from
some of the relationships already undertaken by the school and we all wish to develop these
further and perhaps engage in new ones, refresh old ones and possibly discontinue those
where no real value is being gained by any of the participants.
In 2014/15 the Governing Body will commence a consultation to gauge views on which
bodies people think that the school ought to be partnering with and why. This will help
us to capture all possible partners and we can then work on developing the key partnerships
across a variety of themes, be they educational, business, community – based or others.
8.
Conclusion & Actions
This strategy paper takes the opportunity to look five years ahead and has identified that
there are challenges the school will need to address. As well as raising these issues, the
school has also outlined how it will meet those challenges to ensure our children continue to
receive the best education and experience that we can provide.
Recognising that, as with any five year strategy, the most concrete actions are in the early
years of the plan, the following commitments have been given and the Governing Body will
provide updates every six months as to progress on the achievement of these commitments.
 We will improve our OFSTED achievement from Good to Outstanding by the end of
the academic year 2016/17.
 Within the first year of the strategy, the school will determine and publish the plans for
the development of the estate categorised by the three bands set out in the Estates
section.
 The school will have in place by the beginning of 2014/15 the following –
 One maintenance review cycle across the school which assesses emergent
needs throughout the year.
 One fire safety, risk management and health and safety inspection set of
protocols across the school.
 A class refurbishment plan which identifies classes by need regardless of Key
Stage.
 An energy management strategy across the school.
 The doubling of the contribution to the school of commercial activities from that
achieved in 12/13 by the end of this five year period.
 During 2014/15 and 2015/16 the school will continue to review costs.
 The school will not be in deficit in any year of the five year period.
 The Governing Body will, in 2014/15, provide a series of forums and information, to
foster a discussion about the future governance of the school.
 In 2014/15 the Governing Body will commence a consultation to gauge views on
partnering.
Balfour is a strong school with fantastic children, dedicated staff, a leadership team with clear
focus, and a record of delivery. Everyone connected to the school has an underlying
conviction that improvement is non – negotiable and our children are at the heart of what we
do.