Over the next few years, spending on education is going to outstrip any previous investment by a substantial amount. As just one indicator, the global sum spent on each secondary pupil within the new budget will mean that state spending on education will be running substantially ahead of independent school fees. However, given an investment of almost £13 billion, it is imperative that the education system delivers. This means that the increasing allocation of funding that goes direct to schools is going to make headteachers, governors and managers more accountable for progress in education than ever before.

Behind the rhetoric of raising standards, developing every child’s potential and eliminating the schools that Estelle Morris would not touch with a bargepole, every secondary school is going to have upwards of £160,000 to spend on improvement. The challenge now is to start thinking about how to spend it.

Compared to the total education budget, the allocation to schools is just one aspect so there is plenty of funding for the big educational infrastructure changes that the DfES currently favours. City Academies, advanced training and beacon schools, and collegiate structures where effective schools take over weaker neighbours are all on the government agenda and will be funded separately. There will be more money for training and grants for post-16 learning as well. So, given all these budget headings and income streams, what else should schools be doing with their new money?

One place to start the discussions is the School Teacher Review Body (STRB) documents on remodelling the teaching profession. These are specifically related to workload, the teacher unions’ demands for a shorter, and defined, working week and the government’s priorities in teacher supply, the use of ancillary staff and ICT. However, they provide some interesting strategic pathways for schools to consider.

Firstly, schools can explore the possibility of making more ‘professional time’ for teachers or guaranteed teacher non-contact time (GTNCT) as it is often labelled. There is absolutely no doubt from the research in this area that the lack of GTNCT is not simply a major grumble for teachers, but is also a key factor in school effectiveness and related to problems with recruitment, retention and long-term teacher absence. GTNCT, that should be more properly labelled as guaranteed professional time to show what it is rather than what it isn’t, can be achieved by appointing more teachers, appointing support staff, transferring other roles away from teachers so that they are ‘free to teach’, making better use of ICT and developing radical approaches to curriculum planning and teaching groups.

The national debate has become caught up in the sterile avenue of whether GTNCT should be defined as so many hours per week or as some percentage of the taught week. These arguments are unhelpful as are those that talk about capping teaching time as if ‘teaching’ is the problem. Instead, it makes far more sense for teachers to analyse how much guaranteed professional time they require in terms of what they are going to do with it. If it simply means more hours for marking and preparation then a major opportunity will be lost. If it means space for team meetings, joint planning and strategic thinking then there is the chance to make real progress. One solution from the STRB has been to identify separate time for the planning and preparation of lessons, and for marking and recording (PPMR) on the grounds that much of the evidence suggests that this is the are where the problem of workload resides. However, simply adding to PPMR time may not lead to a measurable improvement.

The use of support staff also has to be carefully thought through. There are situations, for example, where support staff have to be regularly briefed and supported in role. Cover for absence is a good example, where it may be easier to sit with a class yourself than brief a teaching assistant from another subject area and be available to offer support during a lesson. Addressing truancy through attendance monitoring and the use of specialist staff is another activity where what appears, at first sight, to be taking workload away from teachers can actually increase it. And, of course, ICT is a two-edged sword where many new applications and technologies can actually take longer than the old ways in their development phase.

Another strategic element is concerned with management group time. The main concerns in this are have been well rehearsed in the past but they include bureaucracy in the DfES and the local education authorities and the complexity of funding arrangements and statutory reporting requirements. There are two key issues for schools to consider. The first is to find time for the leadership group to manage. OFSTED has recently noted, in connection with headteacher training, that there is too much emphasis on leadership and not enough on simple management in the current view of the headteacher role. The STRB has also confirmed that many school managers work unreasonable hours in term-time to an extent where their quality of life suffers and they perform less effectively. It has called for a statement about the anticipated work/life balance to be added to pay and conditions.

Finally, the STRB has suggested that CPD can be improved both in terms of the quality of what is offered on the five allocated days a year but also by funding teachers for an extra five days outside of contracted hours. To some teachers this might look like a sly attempt to extend the working year but it could lead to a major expansion of ‘summer schools’ that link refresher courses to peer discussion and personal development.

All of this has gone to the DfES so that the government can form a view on it and there will be new proposals later in the Autumn. However, it would be possible now to look at remodelling teaching within the school by recruiting and training more TAs, by making ICT work to support teaching and learning, and by the advocating of a consistent mantra that teachers are in the school to teach.