Regulatory and Legislative Requirements

Hi everyone and welcome to this podcast, one of a series where we dive into all things apprenticeships, early years, and schools. I'm aunt and I support Best Practice Network with developing curriculum content for apprenticeship programs. I'm joined by my fantastic co-hosts, Deb and Nick. Deb, why did you introduce yourself? Thanks aunt. Hello, I'm Deb and I also work for Best Practice Network as an apprenticeship coach. I have a real passion for leadership and management and I'm so excited to be here today. Nick, over to you. Hey everyone, I'm Nick and I'm here to bring my insights from the world of education and school management. And today we've got a really interesting discussion lined up for you. So let's dive in. Yep, absolutely Nick. Today we have a special interview that we're excited to share. Nick sat down with David Twambley on the theme of legislation on regulatory compliance. There's something to speak about, to talk about some of the challenges, on opportunities for leaders, school settings, particularly focusing on health and safety, finance and risk management. Nick, how would you give us a little teaser? Well, it was such an insightful conversation. It really gave me a lot to think about in terms of how we approach managing risks and particularly operational practices in today's, let's be honest, quite litigious culture. Absolutely, Nick. And the best part for me is not just about the knowledge Dave gave us some really practical tips that I think will be useful for any new leaders working in schools. So without further ado, let's get into the interview. Hello, David. We're here to talk about legislation and regulatory compliance and all sorts of interesting things like that. Do you want to first of all tell us who you are, where you work and why the area of expertise kind of falls within your remit? Sure, so hi, Nick. So I am currently the Depth's Chief Executive of a sort of medium-sized multi-cardmetry trust. My role is very much within the operational space, so I am the Chief Financial Officer and I also lead the operations team within the trust. We have 15 schools ranging from small primaries through to large 11 to 18 provisions. So we have quite a diverse and broad church of schools and across a range of different geographical localities as well. So I suppose why all this is most pertinent to me is the really, the linchpin part of my role is around ensuring that we're complying with the key regulations, legislation, policies and processes that govern the sector and schools. And so a key aspect really for me is around the interpretation of that for a range of different stakeholders, ensuring compliance and ensuring engagement with it, and then that training and development when people are coming into a space where they have to engage with it for the first time. Right, and what about accountability? You mentioned a few aspects of your role, so to whom are you accountable for these kinds of issues? Yes, so my role is directly accountable to the accounting officer within the multi-cardmetry trust, and then ultimately that's we held to account by the trust board. So and the trust board itself has a range of different subcommittees, most of which pertain to those legal regulatory process and policy themes that we're going to discuss. So things like finance and staffing committee, which explores all things compliance in terms of finance and HR, risk committee, which is looking at things like risky compliance and assessing kind of risk appetite and risk engagement. And then we also have a subcommittee around governance, which explores specifically those points around accountability and responsibility. But it is an important point because I think where where that responsibility sits is going to have a big bearing on how much you need to worry about some of these things. And actually how much it's your role to interpret them and how much it's somebody else's role to interpret them, and then you're following the guidance you've been given. Okay, so that that seems like there's a like a chain of command, because I mean at one point when I when I asked about accountability, some of these things are subject to the law, they like health and safety. So your internal accountability is up through your matte structure to the board, is one element of it, but above and beyond that, they're unanswerable to Parliament. I mean, because some of these statically aren't they? Yeah, and I mean ultimately most of these things, the book will stop with either the accounting officer or the trust board and usually both. I think where it gets more interesting and more nuanced is where the delegation and responsibilities sit. So this is where it particularly in larger trust, the Schema delegation, which is quite a dry document, and usually it's a table or a grid, and it just details out a list of these kind of key areas and says who's ultimately accountable for it, who's going to look after it on a day-to-day basis. And I think having clarity about that's really important, because once you know who's meant to be doing the do, you can either ensure that you're sufficiently skilled, experienced, knowledgeable to deliver yourself if you need to, or you're engaging with the right person who has those skills in that knowledge and who's going to interpret and guide you. So you use an example like health and safety, which is obviously kind of a key area within schools and obviously a key area of risk. Usually health and safety won't sit in terms of the functional delivery of it with the accounting officer. So you've not got the accounting officer going around, running the taps, doing the Legionella checks, and the CEO's not doing that. Yeah. Clearly they're delegating some of that responsibility down, and indeed headteachers, typically in schools, are not doing that either. But they do need to understand that those checks need to take place, and they need some idea about how they're going to monitor and manage to make sure those checks are happening. Now, back in the day when schools were pretty much all within the local authority, that was an LA officer. So it was all very straightforward. So you would come in with a checklist, exactly, and as and when a new site manager or facilities manager came in, they'd be given a checklist, they'd be given a little booklet, and they'd be told, "Right, you do this on this day, this on this day, I'm welcome and check it, you know, on whatever date every year." With the sort of devolution of responsibility into accounting trusts, it's all got a bit murky, and actually I think some trusts are still kind of, you know, scrabbling to catch up. I think one of the funny things with this topic and with this area is, I think there's a presumption that all those in leadership management positions are all highly competent and confident in dealing with it, and I'm afraid that's just not the case. So there is a surprising amount of googling that still happens even at senior levels, you know, to ensure that we are actually engaging with some of these things in the right way, because it's an incredibly specialist, you know. So if we use a recent test case that we've had that we've been exploring, so we've started looking at more, I suppose, creative recruitment and retention solutions. One of those has been around recruitment and specifically looking at overseas workers and looking at those who are engaging, for instance, with university courses and training to teach in the UK, and that's got us into the complicated world of sponsorship and visas and engagement with the home office. That is a very specialist area, and we do not know what we are doing, and we have been engaging very directly with the firmest listers who've been taking us through that step by step. But as they themselves said, you know, as the founder of the firm's list has said, "This is something that is so specialist, that's all I do." You know, my job is just doing this. So if you're in an organisation with a broader set of responsibilities, if you're in an organisation where you have a range of different legislations that you need to engage with, regulations you need to engage with different aspects to your role, as invariably in senior leadership, and then ultimately in executive leadership in schools you will have. You need to recognise that you're not going to know all of the specialist information all of the time, and I think the danger that sometimes people fall into is they think they ought to know it, so they don't ask for help, so then they try and like it, then they try and wing it, and that's when people get in real trouble, and that's when issues arise really because people are trying to do it with the best one, the best intentions, but ultimately without that relevant knowledge or that relevant interpretive skill, that's what I'm saying. So quite a large part of my role is raiding people in, so quite a lot of my day to day is spent, not telling people you can't do things, but making sure that they understand that they will need to seek specialist guidance and advice before they do some things, because otherwise they'll just do them wrong, and then it's much harder to row back from a position where you've got something wrong than it is to try and address it before it happens. Great, thank you. So from what I can tell there, number one is understand your responsibilities within the flow chart of that cascade of accountability that you described, number one is know your place and understand what your responsibilities are, then I hear you talk about seeking external and specific advice to build on your own knowledge, where does the individual appetite for risk come into it? Because some leaders at different levels within schools will have an attitude of, oh, that'll probably never happen, let's not worry about it. And others may interpret life as you're saying, nobody moved because there's something serious about it happen. And in that mix, there's a lot of interpretation of risk, isn't it? How do you mitigate that? I think the first thing to say is it's really difficult. It's really challenging. I think interpretation and guidance is really important, so making it quite explicit what the organisation's view of a particular risk area is, and what our expectation is around, if you like, your engagement with that risk appetite. That being said, you will still get a lot of variation. I think the interest you've been to explore, and it's more of a kind of, I suppose, a coaching and a mentoring point with senior leaders who are moving into their roles is, where I am how are you making that risk assessment? So how are you arriving at that view? And let's explore whether or not you actually have the knowledge and/or skills to arrive at that in a reliable way. So some senior leaders will have a very risk of verse approach because they don't know or understand and they're not confident. And that's logical and that's understandable, but as you're alluded to, it can lead to paralysis, so it can lead to you simply not doing things, because you are so worried you'll do them wrong. And sometimes that can breed a degree of dependency on those more specialist or expert staff, which again, is preventing you from moving a sensible pace or it is not allowing you to upskill yourself. The flip side to that is those senior leaders who will just go for it, they'll just go helpful, other because they are more focused on the end outcome than they are on the means of getting there. I think the frustration that you'll see for many senior leaders in schools is a sense that there's an element of bureaucracy, that there's an element of paper pushing or red tape that needs to be gone through in order to achieve the outcomes that those senior leaders want. I think they only really need one mishap to demonstrate to them why all of that stuff is there. And I think it's difficult because without having had that experience of something go a little bit wrong or a lot wrong, then some of those more risk and pervious sort of leaders, if you like, those who are much less concerned about that, will struggle to compute. So I think one of the things that we tend to lean on is case study examples, so really teasing out, okay, let's just tell you about a time when it went wrong, you might not have got wrong in our organisation, but let's tell you about a time when it went wrong and just give you a sense of flavour for how the magnitude of that can actually be hugely disproportionate to what you think you've done. And I think until you've got some of those case studies, I mean, it's the same as we see, obviously, when we do things like safeguarding training, you know, that the sandwich more resonance, when you've got a specific case, when you've got a specific instance of a thing that has happened, you know, it's all very sort of theoretical and loose. You bundle around a word like Legion Outer and you go, "Okay, well, I don't really know what that is. I've never come across it. I've never known anybody who's suffered from it. I don't understand why it's a big deal." If you give a case of a Legion Outer outbreak, where you've had, you know, hospitalised pupils and staff, certainly it gains a little bit. It becomes real. It's a similar sort of thing to that which we had with RAC in the last 12 months or so. That errated reinforced concrete that most, the huge number of school buildings are riddled with. And nobody really cared about until some sort of fell out of a ceiling and landed on the floor suddenly, "Okay, but there actually is risk here." And obviously theoretically, we weren't concerned, but then when there's that practical implication and you're actually seeing damage, then it changes that engagement, doesn't that? Yeah, I think that's really helpful. That sounds a bit like on a face-to-face training day, when you've got the power points and all the torque from the front, and then you get into a group and talk about a case study, that's when it really becomes alive. And it becomes a real thing. And that's when people start taking notes to take back to their school. So that leads me on to the next question in terms of practical application at school level. Have you got a handful of key policy areas that you really focus on? You've mentioned health and safety, and mostly GDPR. In terms of helping with a practical application, especially getting your organisational policies and bringing all your stakeholders in, have you got a handful of really key areas that you feel you could offer? Yeah, I think it very much depends on how and where you're coming into that senior leadership role and what level you're sitting at. But I mean, there are core things that senior leaders are going to need to be engaging with regardless of what they're there, if you're like, their sub-responsibilities are. Yeah. For me, something that some of the linchpin ones really are staffing policies, staffing policies and processes, I think if you don't really understand how some of those core policies work within your setting, then your ability to lead and manage people securely is really hampered. If you aren't confident to know what can I or can't I challenge in terms of conduct or behaviour, can I or can't I engage with in terms of capability and performance without those basic skills, your capacity to effectively lead and manage others is really hampered because you don't know what you can and can't say. You may say something that you're not allowed to say, you may not say something when really you ought to be, you know, and I think that particularly actually for new senior leaders tends actually to lead much more down that risk-averse passivity route than it does around the gum co-attitude. You occasionally get a new senior leader who is who is quite assertive with stuff and who will set very high expectations and will be quite broskin in terms of how they articulate those expectations, but that's quite rare. That is quite rare. More often what you will get is somebody who will not be confident challenging, poor behaviour will not necessarily be confident challenging under performance because they've probably only ever had to do it with children. They've only ever had to do it with children and young people and so suddenly switch into a mode where you're actually utilizing some of the same sorts of skills that you've developed as a teacher to engage with other adults. I think is quite a step change and it's quite a mental shift. I think because we have this expectation that the adults will self-regulate in a way that they simply don't. I think for me that's as you're coming in senior leadership, that's crucial. Another obvious one is anything to do with money, anything to do with finance. You just need to know what you can and can't do because if you're going to get in real trouble, real trouble in a school, it's spending money when you're not allowed to. That's a space where you'll get in real trouble, real fast. I think things like financial handbooks and procurement limits and things like that. Usually there'll be a guide in your school somewhere, usually there'll be somebody competent to do it. I think school business managers can be your best friend with these sorts of things because they will know some of those key bits of information or leaning into central staff if indeed you've got central function around that. And then suppose the last thing for me probably is just having a sense of governance. Governance is a new thing for you as a senior leader. You will not have really interacted with it at any prior point in your career. You might have been invited to a governance meeting to present on something once. It will be that kind of thing. As you're moving into those more senior roles, you might have a link governor that you have to sort of service and meet with and report to. You might have to prepare timely reports to a governing body. You might need to engage with a subcommittee or a specialist link governor around something like say health and safety. That's a real step change for you because you won't be used to that sort of structure and that sort of accountability. You'll just be used to a linear. That's my line manager. My line manager tells me what to do. And then my line manager tells me whether or not I've done it right sort of approach, which is more straightforward, I suppose. Whereas that sort of triangulated engagement with those chartered governance and leaders starts to make things a little bit more complicated. So I think just knowing if, when and how you're going to need to engage with governors and what you need to deliver to service that is a useful thing as you go and into senior leadership because it will be. You won't have had exposure to it before. Brilliant. Great advice. Thank you so much. Okay, we're near in the end. We started with health and safety. We made reference to it. So let's end with health and safety. I'm intrigued by one of the case study. So I've just simply finished. I've got a little war story for us. I've got a health and safety nightmare or a situation that you described so eloquently that where the outcomes were disproportionate to the risk. Yeah, I mean, I think with health and safety, the issue you find is sometimes something really minor and have a huge impact. So I suppose the example I've got is around health and safety on the school site. So school trip. And with all the best intentions, the site stuff opened the front car park for staff to park and then they would go off and get the coach. But what they didn't do is they didn't put on any flood lights and so effectively staff were coming in to the car park five in the morning in the dark, had a member of staff tripped over a curb, broke the leg and proceeded to bring a claim against the school, which was settled in or I don't know, I think it was fairly high five figures because of sort of ongoing injuries and so on. Now, thankfully, the vast majority of schools, particularly those within Academy Trusts, are within a very robust insurance structure, which does provide a degree of insulation. But obviously, if we hadn't been brought into that, then that goes in a huge cost of the school. So you do get issues like that. I suppose another little war story would be a ceiling fund, fell and landed on a member of staff's head, quite challenging incident. I think what you do find with health and safety though is that some of these things are very difficult to foresee. So there are certain things where you can go, well, that was an obvious oversight and there are other things where you go, well, we're getting into that of God territory there. I think the key thing is, under saying what is or isn't a reasonably mitigatable risk, things like the curb story. Well, I mean, you could have foreseen that in the dark, somebody might trip, something like a ceiling fund, just falling. There's no real allowance for that because you're hitting a point where there's some sort of mechanical failure that you could never have foreseen. And that is just, and that's the interesting thing, isn't I suppose, with something like health and safety, that this reeds up the anticipated risk that you can mitigate. And there is some risk that you can't happen, you know, stuff happens. And I think one of the things that's important to do is have that sense of balance because sometimes things will happen, you know, with an incidence of people who've been injured in playgrounds and so on. People get people fall over, you know, children fall over, children will fall over, you know, the smallest things. And they will slip on the most grippy of surfaces. It's, you know, it's an off the nature of being a child, and still developing coordination and, you know, common sense and an element of risk management for yourself as well as a person. So I think it's, it's trying to find that speak spot, isn't it, where you, you're taking all reasonable steps and precautions, but you have to accept that, you know, accidents will happen, things will go wrong. And I think as a senior leader, it's trying to ensure that you're going into it with a mindset of, I've taken all the steps I could have to mitigate something bad happening. And therefore, I don't take it on myself too much if something bad does happen because otherwise again, with the accumulation of experience and incidence, because they just do happen, you can get to a space where you start to feel quite drained by it or you can start to feel that that accountability weighing on you, when actually there really isn't anything else you could have done. And I think that my, I suppose my final takeaway with all of this is, stuff will go wrong. The key thing for you to ensure as a professional is that you've taken all reasonable steps so that if you're challenged on it, you can turn around legitimately and say, yes, I am confident at the end of the day, when I go to sleep at night, I've done all I reasonably could make sure everybody is safe and we've complied with the law and followed our processes. And if you've done all of that, then you're, you're secure and you know, you're in the right place. You might not necessarily always be the absolute best practice, but everybody's always driving towards that, right? None of us have perfected any of these things. But if you've done enough that you're confident that you are in the right of it, then that for me is how you know whether or not you've gained that knowledge and you are utilizing those skills in the right way. Great. Great. Wonderful advice. Thank you so much David. It's been real, real interesting and enlightening look under the bonnet of regulation and compliance, but it can seem a bit scary, but you've you've impacted and made it make a whole lot of sense. So thank you very much. No, that's great. Thanks, Nick. Wow. That, you know, a fascinating interview, Nick, and just to say to you, well done, I thought that I did an amazing job leading that conversation. David, you know, give us a load of think about, especially when it comes to accountability and organisations that, you know, responsible for regulatory and governance compliance, et cetera. Deb, what's to do to you the most? I think for me, it was definitely the part about the importance of policies and legislation and compliance. In the everyday running of a school, we can lose sight of the importance of these. So to revisit it today. Absolutely. And I really appreciate it the way that David touched on the importance of gaining expert external advice. I think this is key, not just in our apprenticeship context, but across all educational settings. Yeah, yeah, definitely. And also interesting when David discussed governance, you know, for example, how as a rising leader, you may have limited experience. I know for myself, you know, that they'd been limited opportunity when I was starting in senior roles, especially how that links back to working within the levels of delegation. We then face in schools and other organisations, you know, what do you think? Yes, I agree. Often we are launched into meetings, literally flying by the seat of our pants. There's no real training on how to approach, understand these meetings. For example, you suddenly need to prepare a report for a governor's or trustees meeting. And you're actually, are you actually fully informed about what needs to be included and how to present that information? Absolutely. I just look, David's phrase, don't wing it. Because with new leaders, you have full of enthusiasm, but it's so important that we get the training and the right experience. Because ultimately, we want to make our schools as safe as possible for everyone. Yeah, yeah, I can agree more there. You know, it's just a lot to reflect. And after that, a really rich conversation reminds me of the importance of the tendering process, for example, that came up in my mind as David was speaking. If you plan on spending over the beyond the scope of your organisation scheme of delegation, you're going to need to consider undertaking a full tendering process, possibly. You know, something wasn't mentioned in the podcast there, but something perhaps our listeners could explore in more detail outside of this recording. I agree. And for me also, I'm going to reflect on revisiting how we use policies in school and clarify the roles and responsibilities for everyone in school. And then did I want CPD might need to be put in place to facilitate that? Well, excellent. It seems like we've all got some really good takeaways from today's session. Yeah, absolutely. It was really, really rich conversation, interesting podcast. So thanks, Deb. Thanks, Nick. And thank you all for tuning in. And we'll be back with more insightful discussions soon. Until then, keep making a difference in your settings. And we'll see you next time. Thank you. Bye.