Hard Times call for Hard measures and everyone is thinking of how to manage school finances effectively. In a recession, it is often said that a good administrator should be able to earn his/her salary in savings. If you aren’t cutting costs as much as you’d like to, read on. You may think you’ve done everything possible to reduce costs without compromising on quality but you probably haven’t tried these 4 extra cost cutting tricks:

1. Go paperless 

At first glance this may sound ridiculous. A school going paperless? But going paperless doesn’t mean doing away with paper altogether just like going cashless doesn’t mean an end to physical currency. Read this article to see just how going paperless can save your school in terms of money, supplies, time, storage, staff, and risk of losing data.

Need one more reason to reduce your paper usage as much as possible? Consider this: About 95% of paper you use in your school is eventually thrown away or misplaced.

A good step towards going paperless is getting an integrated school management system if you don’t already have one. If you do, utilizing it more efficiently can level down a greater deal of administrative paper costs.

Your school can also switch to e-books and e-libraries and save on cost of books. Other reasons why innovative schools use e-libraries is because they last longer, can be easily updated as opposed to having to buy new copies, can be easily shared, and harder to misplace/damage.

We made a free Guide Answering Common School Admin Questions. You can Get it here

2. Smarter inventory

Management of inventories and supplies like classroom materials and uniforms is one obvious but overlooked way that massive leakage of funds and supplies can be checked. Setting up a stricter  policies for monitoring the use and distribution of these items, even for one week will yield you surprising savings results. A school management software can also help you do that. Try out a free demo and see how it works.

Get the infograph below:

3. Increase class sizes

Increasing the number of students per class is a classic trick for spreading around tight resources further. Take a scenario where you have 4 similar arms of 15 student classes. Transferring 5 students each from the fourth class into each of the 3 other classes, will create just 3 classes of 20 students, eliminating a significant individual ‘class budget’ for the 4^th class. It also meas you don’t have to hire an extra class teacher, existing teachers have one less class periods and so on and on.

Be careful though not to overdo this one and end up with over crowded classrooms.

4. Cut extra-curricular

Before you rush to throw out debate club and P.E period, cutting extra-curricular doesn’t have to mean limiting school time to just classroom time.  You can still have well-rounded students. It’s best to be strategic with this one by scrapping the activities that are not of fundamental value. You could also cut down on the time of some activities that happen after normal school hours.

As a solution to school budget cuts, a writer for Harvard business review suggested conducting summer school online instead of scrapping it completely. Take a cue from HBR and create win-win alternatives for some activities, instead of cutting them altogether. Talk to us to discuss your e-learning needs.

One key element when trying to cut costs in any organisation is transparency. Encouraging transparency  of school funds and spending allows involved parties stay accountable in keeping track of spending. That being said, it is up to you to apply whatever methods work best for your school.

Conduct a staff meeting where everyone is encouraged to suggest creative ways to cut costs and who knows? Maybe parents can get involved too.

Before you go…

Do you have any special tricks that work to save costs for your school? Please comment below. Don’t forget to share this post with friends, if you found it helpful.