Welcome to the Scholarpack blog

With so much recent news coverage on the subject of off-rolling, we decided to take a closer look at the official exclusions guidance. We find out when pupils can be excluded and for how long. We also investigate how to record exclusions on attendance registers.

We sought the help of our associate education expert David New to put together some top tips on how to update student and staff information efficiently on your MIS.

The end of the school year will soon be upon us and you are probably already thinking about report writing. Below, we have compiled some handy examples of time-saving report-writing strategies from schools around the country, alongside tips on how to improve your reporting processes.

Interventions are a common way of attempting to boost a pupil’s achievement. But how can you track whether they are bringing about positive change? We spoke to 2 of our associate education experts, Anita Devi and Bill Dennison, about how schools can evaluate the impact and value for money of interventions.

As Damien Hinds stated in last year’s Strategy for Education Providers and the Technology Industry, ICT can play a fundamental part in helping tackle some of the challenges that we face in education. But, as he points out, it can be difficult for education leaders to separate evidence-based practice and products from technological gimmicks. There is one recommendation, however, that has been generally accepted as highly beneficial to the sector - the adoption of the Cloud.

With ever-tightening budgets, school leaders are constantly on the lookout for ways of improving financial efficiency. We spoke to chartered accountant and business consultant Martin Owen to get his advice on improving efficiency in a school’s catering budget.

School staff wellbeing is a subject that has received extensive coverage in the news during the past year and it has generally been acknowledged that more needs to be done to support rising stress-levels. We worked with Carolyn Unsted, a former headteacher and education consultant, to get tips on improving the work-life balance of staff and learn how to make sure employees have a voice on workload issues.

Online safety is a hugely important issue in schools, but with new trends in social media and gaming constantly emerging, it can be difficult to know what to look out for. We speak to Tom Pinfield, Senior Education Officer at Childnet International about how teachers and school leaders can keep on top of the latest online safeguarding concerns.

Schools spending public money (including academies) must make sure they're getting the best value from their contracts for goods and services.

When contracts come to an end it's good practice to re-procure, to make sure the product or service still meets your needs and gives you the best value for money.