Sustain

Securing Long-Term Impact & Resilience

Part 1 - Embedding Your Digital Strategy

Built to Last?

The Sustain phase is where your strategy transitions from a "digital project" into "the way we do things here." True sustainability means that if your digital lead or headteacher leaves tomorrow, the quality of teaching and learning remains entirely unaffected.

This section equips senior leaders with the structural levers required to future-proof funding, embed technology into curriculum design, and seamlessly onboard the next generation of staff.

The 'Point of Need' Onboarding Hub

Avoid overwhelming new starters with intensive tech training during an already packed September induction week. Instead, build a central, asynchronous "Onboarding Hub" featuring short, bite-sized screen recordings modeling classroom PedTech practices.

The Buddy

Pair every new staff member with an internal Champion or peer coach. This provides low-stakes, daily classroom support, allowing them to ask technical or pedagogical questions without feeling judged

Align Recruitment Expectations

Update job descriptions and interview tasks to reflect your digital culture. Ask candidates how they use technology to reduce workload or support inclusion, signaling your school priorities before they even accept a post.

Key Questions

If three of your digitally mature teachers left the school this term, does a framework exist to ensure their replacements maintain the same level of digital pedagogical impact?

Does your current induction process teach new staff which buttons to press, or does it deeply induct them into why your school leverages technology for learning?

Part 2 - Curriculum Mapping & Integrating the School Development Plan (SDP)

Technology should never sit alongside your curriculum as an optional add-on; it must be woven directly into your curriculum mapping. To achieve long-term sustainability, some digital tools should be explicitly named in schemes of work as the primary vehicle for achieving specific cognitive, retrieval, or accessibility outcomes.

Key Considerations

Explicit Scheme of Work Integration:
Review your planning - Replace vague instructions like 'use devices in this lesson' - with forensic, pedagogy-first prompts for whole class instruction and adaptations (e.g., "Students to use digital audio recording tools here to capture their verbal hypothesis before conducting their experiment)

The SDP Alignment Test:
Every digital initiative must directly anchor to a core priority in your School Development Plan (SDP). If your SDP priority is raising boys' writing standards, your digital strategy should explicitly track how 1:1 devices are removing barriers to writing endurance for that cohort.

Continuous Curriculum Audits:
Establish a regular cycle where subject and phase leaders review their curriculum maps. This ensures digital tools evolve alongside national curriculum updates or changes to exam board specifications.

Formalising Tech in SEND Support Plans:
Transition away from generic accommodations like "Provide a scribe" or "Use a laptop." Instead, train your SENCO and class teachers to write specific, actionable digital scaffolds directly into IEPs, provision maps, and EHCP reviews (e.g. 'CHILD'S NAME' to utilise recording features to formulate their sentence before writing') This ensures that any supply teacher or new staff member knows exactly what digital adjustments are required for that child.

Key Questions

Look at your current School Development Plan: is technology treated as an isolated, standalone section, or is it deeply integrated across your standards, inclusion, and workload priorities?

Are your subject leaders empowered to evaluate how digital tools are altering the learning sequence within their specific disciplines, or do they view technology as an issue for the IT team?

Look at your current SEND support plans and EHCP reviews: are digital accessibility tools named explicitly as standard accommodations, or are they left to individual teacher discretion?

Financial Sustainability & Future Funding Models

The single biggest mistake in school budgeting is treating the IT budget as an isolated, luxury capital expense. When technology is mapped correctly to learning, it functions as an operational lever that dramatically reduces other, more expensive baseline school costs.

To future-proof your digital transformation, leaders must shift from a traditional accounting model to an Asset Realignment Strategy. This exercise allows you to audit hidden financial leaks—such as soaring photocopying bills and unsustainable human intervention costs—and redirect those identical funds into a ring-fenced, sustainable technology refresh loop.

Part 3 - Leadership Budget Exercise:

The Operational Displacement Dividend

To justify increasing or restructuring your IT budget to governors and trustees, complete the following financial comparative mapping with your School Business Manager (SBM):

When implemented effectively, educational technology accelerates the pace of learning for every student.

By utilising bespoke platforms, pupils can progress at their own individual pace, while empowering teachers to be more adaptive and flexible.

Crucially, this approach engages students through methods that reflect a modern, twenty-first-century learning environment.

Page updated

Report abuse