I was struck by the sense that change is in the air. For some School Leaders it’s all par for the course and for others, well, they just want to get off the bus because it’s not what they signed up for.

One such change is in the shift in responsibility, perceived or otherwise, of the management of their schools premises. Also, their support network is changing to the point where some feel there’s just no one there anymore. No one picks up the telephone and no one replies to emails.

When approaching this subject and of health & safety compliance a lot of delegates just rolled their eyes. It was as if they were saying mentally, ‘please, don’t take me to that bad place!’. There wasn’t a single Primary Headteacher that didn’t see this area as a bit of headache, and a constant cause for concern. A lot had the uneasy feeling that they just didn’t have it covered well enough to be utterly confident it’s all in hand. Quite a number were really unhappy with their current arrangements and were dealing with the thought of having to make alternative arrangements.

In all cases, though, I felt the consistent theme was that they felt it was going to be painful. What makes it worse for them, and I can fully empathise with this, is that it’s very much a junior item on their list of priorities in terms of time devoted even though it clearly falls into the area of safeguarding children and if things go wrong, the school can be closed, partially or fully.

What was interesting was the change in the conversation as soon as they realised there was a system that could help. Fundamentally, the Headteacher wants to know that they are doing everything that needs to be done and that they can prove it, to themselves for peace of mind, and to the inspectors as evidence. They want to know that the support staff in their school have an easy to use, effective system that takes a lot of the work and worry away from them, that nothing gets missed or escalates into something bigger. So as soon as they took the time to look at Every: the easy to use online premises management system for schools, they realised that here was a system that could form part of the premises management backbone in the school, in the same as email forms part of the communication backbone.

We, at Every, are under no illusions, premises management is not the most exciting of topics to talk about but it’s necessary and important! We see it as an effective way of freeing up your time and mental energy to devote to the other, some might say more, important tasks like engaging with the children and supporting your team. 

We invite you to take a 15 minute interactive tour of the system. You’ll know within 2 minutes if you want to invest the rest of the 15 and if you like what you see we’ll leave an account open for you to try it out.