"We have found the purchase order system to be a great addition to our internal financial controls. It gives staff the flexibility and ease to raise order forms and it gives budget holders the control and oversight to ensure that only resources needed are ordered aligning with SDP priorities saving time for both staff raising the forms and budget holders approving them.
It also saves time for our finance and admin staff who are able to process orders more efficiently.
Authorisation thresholds can be adapted to meet our financial policies and amended as needed and auditors can see the audit trail of all order forms raised."
Chris James - Head of Finance - Britannia Education Trust
"We have had the pleasure of working with Luke Craig to improve our systems and start the process of automation and started with the special leave request system and establishing an attendance dashboard. Luke was highly responsive to tweaks that we wanted along the way and is a pleasure to work with - he goes out of his way to listen to suggestions and acts on them in a timely fashion. We can't wait to work on other areas as part of the automation suite he is developing."
Sukwinder Samra - Headteacher - Elmhurst Primary School
"The attendance dashboard has been an extremely useful tool for us. I can easily check the attendance of different year groups and classes across the trust and filter it for certain student groups like PP or gender. I can also sort the table to see which individual students are persistently absent and we can follow up with them. The system is easy to use and I like how it updates every day."
Linda-May Bingham - Executive Head - Britannia Education Trust
"Since we started using The Education Space's automated Educational Risk Assessment system, teachers and our admin team have saved lots of time. The system takes many of the tasks from trip planning and does them for you—which is a massive help! It joins up all areas of the trip letting each team know what they need to know with quick and easy access, from parents to the kitchen, from the admin team to the teachers. Once the Risk Assessment form is completed, the system automatically creates a letter to parents, adds an event to the school calendar, sends out emails to staff that need to know and generates a risk assessment document for everyone to read. It has also helped to focus the attention of the teacher planning the visit to ensure they are asking the correct questions and includes school-specific requirements that we wanted included. Luke was amazing in catering to the specific needs of our school during development and the on-boarding process, including great access to follow-up support."
Chris Jarvis - Deputy Headteacher - Dunmow St Mary's Primary School
"At Britannia Education Trust, we use a Google form for staff to make ‘Special Leave’ requests. The completed form goes to two members of the senior leadership team for approval. For individual school-based staff, the form goes to the business manager (who will be able to check prior absence information using the MIS) and will then go on to the headteacher. For staff who work across the trust, the form goes to the executive headteacher for approval. The three options for approval of the request are:
Approved with pay / Approved without Pay / Deny
There is an option to attach any documentary evidence relating to the request, such as a screenshot of a medical appointment or a pdf letter. If the request is approved, it slots instantly on to the Google calendar, advising all staff of the absence. Using the Google form in this way means that all leave requests are kept documented and are available to recall at any time. And finally, using this Google form for Special Leave requests saves time for the individual staff member and for the SLT the forms would go to."
Hannah Cleland - Trust Business Manager - Britannia Education Trust