Outsourced services for

Schools and

Academies

So you can focus on teaching, not paperwork.

BackgroundTrinity Primary School is a large local authority maintained school based on the outskirts of Hereford city centre. The school has approximately 600 children on its register, ranging in age from 4-11 years.

The school’s motto is ‘believe and achieve’ and Headteacher Ann Pritchard and her team work in partnership with parents to achieve the children’s full potential in the safe learning environment they have created at the school.

Relationship with HoopleWith more children registered at the school than many of Herefordshire’s high schools, running the school efficiently and effectively is a complex task. To make sure things run smoothly, Trinity employs a full-time School Business Manager, Peter Spitzmaul.

It is imperative that stretched resources are utilised wisely and that the school obtains value for money when purchasing any goods or services. With this in mind, the school has for many years bought a range of services from Hoople. These include employee and payroll services; payment management and financial services and SIMS (Schools Information Management System).

By purchasing these services, the school has access to expert HR advice and guidance that includes help on day-to-day issues as well as complex staff contracts queries. Always available at the end of the phone, Hoople’s Schools’ HR Team offers welcome reassurance and support as needed by the school. Generally speaking, the team responds to all enquiries within 24 hours. If they need longer, the team always keeps the school informed.

Day-to-day services provided by Hoople, for example payroll and SIMS, are integral to the smooth running of the school. They are the sorts of services that only really get noticed when things go wrong. In the past year, there have been very few occasions when the school has needed to query any payroll transactions. The school knows when the payroll cut-off points are and has welcomed the flexible and supportive attitude of the Hoople team.

Similarly, SIMS support has been provided when needed by the school. Hoople’s SIMS team is always there to provide guidance and help, which has included personal visits to the school and additional training to show how they can exploit the full potential of the system.

Ann welcomes the fact that Hoople is linked to the local authority. Herefordshire Council is the main shareholder of Hoople Ltd and that relationship provides added security and reassurance for the school. She also knows that because of its link to the local authority and the experience of the Hoople team, there is a deep understanding of the school and the whole education sector and landscape that wouldn’t necessarily be found in other external suppliers.

“”

Trinity Primary School

“The best thing about Hoople is that they are reliable and trustworthy, very supportive and flexible. The vast majority of people within Hoople work hard to build a personal relationship with our school... They often go above and beyond the call of duty to help us.”

Featured

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Introduction

Hoople provides a full range of ‘back-office’ services to over 100 schools and academies in Herefordshire and across the border in Shropshire, Worcestershire and Gloucestershire.

From small local authority controlled primaries to large-scale high school academies, practically all of Herefordshire’s schools and academies buy services from us.

Why Hoople?

• Our specialist and dedicated school advisers have a clear understanding of the schools’ and academies’ environment.

• Our Schools’ team has an extensive understanding of national and legislative changes affecting schools and academies, in terms of financial regulations, employment law and pensions.

• We provide a reliable, confidential and responsive service.• Value for money and transparent pricing structure.

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Services/Contents: Human resources, including: Page 2 - HR management Page 2 - Support, advice and strategy Page 2

Schools’ Employee Services, including: Page 3 - Payroll Page 3 - Transactional HR services Page 3

Financial services Page 4

IT support services Page 5

Schools Information Management System (SIMS) Page 6

Financial Management System (SIMS FMS) Page 6

Recruitment, including: Page 7 - Teaching and non-teaching posts Page 7 - Supply teaching Page 7 - Pre-employment checking and DBS Page 7

Training, including: Page 8 - First Aid courses Page 8 - Other training courses Page 9 - Apprenticeships Page 9

Human Resources

We offer a number of HR packages, each offering a different level of service dependent on your need. Our standard packages are detailed below; each can be tailored to meet your specific needs.

Our professional and experienced team provides specialist HR expertise that is based on many years of working with schools and academies. We understand the local and national context in which schools and academies operate and use that knowledge to provide expert advice across the full range of HR needs; from policy queries to complex re-organisation and case work.

HR essentialsFor schools and academies buying into HR support for the first time, this service includes up-to-date advice on essential people-related issues and legislation and unlimited access to telephone and email advice, helping you to avoid legal pitfalls and expensive employee claims.

Advice and support on issues such as:

• Disciplinary and grievance procedures

• Absence and performance management

• Terms and conditions of employment

• TUPE legislation• Recruitment and selection

legislation• Employment law• Support for referrals

to the Independent Safeguarding Authority

HR strategic supportHoople will work with you to provide specialist, expert advice on the development of your HR strategy, ensuring alignment with, and delivery of, your business strategy. For example:

• Strategic business consultancy

• Succession planning• Employee engagement• Culture change

programmes• Specialist recruitment and

selection• Organisational design• Advice on major

organisational changes, for example changes to terms and conditions of employment

HR enhancedA flexible and adaptable service that offers additional hours of dedicated casework support and advice on more complex employee issues.

Along with all the support provided in our HR essentials service, you will be allocated a dedicated account manager who will provide face-to-face support in areas such as:

• Policy and workforce development initiatives

• Advice and coaching through employee restructure or pay and reward programmes

• Attendance at any hearings and appeals

• HR training sessions

We can also (at an additional cost) undertake document reviews, audits or investigations for you.

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NewHR/Legal SLA– NEW for 2016/17Hoople has partnered with specialist employment lawyers to offer a new HR/Legal SLA ‘add on’ service.Together with the existing provisions of your Core or Enhanced HR SLA, the new service will give you additional advice and assistance, for example with respect to safeguarding, employment, pupil exclusion, HSE and regulation, civil and contractual disputes or Freedom of Information/Data Protection.

Schools’ Employee Services (SES)

Hoople’s SES team provides a one-stop shop for all payroll transactional needs.

As well as a full PAYE payroll function for employees, Hoople will manage your payroll adjustments including deductions, pay awards, increments and expenses and make the applicable calculations for statutory and occupational sick, maternity, paternity and adoption pay.

Our integrated payroll service takes care of all your employment and payroll functions, covering the full spectrum of the employee lifecycle – from induction through to retirement. We provide expert specialist payroll advice and manage your end-to-end payroll requirements including administration, contracts of employment, calculation of deductions, BACS transmissions, electronic payslip provision and HMRC reporting.

Hoople’s SES team also offers professional advice and guidance on a whole range of transactional HR services related to conditions of service and contracts of employment.

For example:• Processing of new starters, leavers and

variations to contracts• Prompt issue of contracts of employment• Up-to-date, consistent advice on the

interpretation of national and statutory guidance to ensure compliance with national conditions of service

• Timely and accurate processing of statutory entitlements

• Assessment of teachers’ pay and advice on remuneration

• A pay queries service • Salary/redundancy estimates• Pension auto-enrolment and compliance• A professionally managed teachers’ pension

service• Administration of employee benefits and

entitlements, including maternity, paternity and absence

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Financial services

Hoople provides high quality, back office financial services that enable you and your team to concentrate on your pupils and teaching.

Our professional service offers you the highest level of financial assurance, tailored to your requirements and backed up with face-to-face, email and/or telephone support from our experienced and knowledgeable team.

We work in partnership with most of Herefordshire’s schools to deliver a range of financial services. Through that experience, we know and understand the challenges you are facing.

Amongst the services we offer to schools (either individually or as part of a tailored package) are:

Free school mealsIn order to alleviate administration pressure on schools, Hoople will undertake the assessment and processing of all pupils in order to identify how many are eligible for pupil premium to cover pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds. Pupil Premium GuaranteeSimilar to the above free school meals service, this service is for all pupils up to Key Stage 2 who currently receive universal infant free school meals

but who should also qualify for pupil premium funding. Hoople will help you to identify these pupils and manage the process on your behalf. This is a one off yearly process which runs from July to September.

Payments managementFor schools that do not operate their own bank account, Hoople will process invoices, action payments and refunds, monitor credit balances and supplier queries on your behalf in line with HMRC’s CIS rules.

Milk schemeHoople will liaise with the Nursery Milk Unit and Rural Payments Agency and collect early repayment of the EU milk subsidy on your behalf. This service assists schools with cash flow by making immediate payment of receipt of claims data from schools.

HCSS Schools’ budgeting software - NEW for 2016/17All Herefordshire local authority maintained schools have recently been trained in the use of this software and are now reaping the benefits in terms of their budgeting processes. By using the new software, schools can easily prepare budgets, including understanding various different scenarios and their cost implications. These can be used to engage with and gain approval from governors.

We are now looking at extending this service to also be available for academy schools.

New

• Budget support and monitoring• Completion of financial returns• VAT advice• Financial planning• Creditor payments • Financial management system review and

support

• School business manager support service• Responsible officer service (Academies only)• Preparation of statutory accounts and liaison

with auditors• Capital planning and fixed asset register• Cashflow planning• Free school meals premium guarantee service

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For further details, contact the Schools’ Finance team at Hoople.

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IT support services

We will work closely with you to ensure that your school has an effective IT system that it is fully supported by a dedicated engineer who understands your school network and knows what you need from your systems.

Your dedicated engineer is backed up by a capable team who can address specialist IT issues covering networks, infrastructure and security. This support service is available in packaged annual support hours.

Whether you wish to use the hours to have support calls resolved remotely, scheduled or on-demand work, or a special project, the choice is completely yours though remote support offers faster resolution of issues and will use up fewer of your support hours. Package choices are as follows:

Support 36

Support 54

Support 108

Ideal for the smaller schoolEquivalent to two hours support every fortnight

Ideal for a small/medium schoolEquivalent to three hours support every fortnightOffers a combination of scheduled on-site visits, telephone and remote access support

Ideal for a medium/large schoolEquivalent to three hours support a weekAs per Support 54. Also includes service desk assistance - a place for you to call and log service requests and receive support. In the event of a business critical incident, such as server, email or network failure, we will respond within one hour and provide a same-day emergency on site response to get you back up and running.

SIMS Information and Financial Management Systems

Hoople’s Schools Information Management System (SIMS) support team provides a highly trained, motivated group of analysts to help you manage your school or academy’s data and will provide support and training on the two software products that we provide. • Schools Information Management System (SIMS) Support enables you to deliver accurate, timely

information to the Department for Education, local authority, and board of governors, helping you to build a complete picture of your pupils and staff members.

• SIMS Financial Management System (FMS) supports all aspects of your financial requirements, helping you to manage your school effectively and make real-time decisions based on facts, not assumptions.

We work in partnership with many of Herefordshire’s schools and academies to develop support packages to meet their specific needs. Typically, these include:

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SIMS Support • Support for SIMS pupil assessment and

performance, from Early Years to KS5, including customised mark sheets

• Reporting to parents using Assessment or Profiles

• Core staff and pupil information, including key DfE processes eg schools census, key stage returns and school workforce return

• Pupil registration • Timetabling and academic management

for high schools• Achievement and behaviour management• Regular visits to your school or academy• Telephone and remote support for fault

resolution• Local training courses and workshops,

with demonstrations of new software

We are also able to offer additional SIMS consultancy services for more specialised support and advice.

SIMS FMS• Manage day-to-day financial tasks

efficiently• Gather information on staff contracts,

payroll, purchases, payments received and assets held at any time

• Easily generates reports to monitor day-to-day spending

• Manage your budget and demonstrate best value

• Manage and set your school or academy’s budget and easily report to governing bodies. It supports the Government’s Schools’ Financial Value.

• Maintain your equipment register• Using your purchases in FMS to populate

the equipment register and allocate stock to staff and rooms.

Recruitment

Hoople’s specialist Recruitment team provides a full agency service that meets the particular needs of schools and academies.

We are Herefordshire’s largest provider of supply teachers and our staff has an in-depth knowledge of the education sector. Over 70 schools regularly use our recruitment services and we have more than 100 quality supply teachers registered on our books.

As well as supply and permanent teaching staff for primary and secondary schools and academies, Hoople is also able to help you with recruitment to non-teaching posts. These include, for example, administrative staff, cleaners, caretakers and lunchtime supervisors.

The service offers:• Extended office hours. We are available

between 7.00 am to 5.00 pm every week day during term time, enabling us to fulfil urgent placements for both teaching and support posts

• A comprehensive database of support staff, including administration, cleaning and caretaking

• A comprehensive bank of qualified supply teachers, to suit your requirements

• Rigorous recruitment and vetting processes in line with DfE guidance

Recruitment administration serviceOur cost-effective recruitment administration service assists schools and academies to save approximately 50% of their current recruitment advertising spend by reducing in-housing staffing costs and eliminating the need to advertise in local papers.

The service includes:• Advertising on multiple job boards• Accessing our extensive candidate database• Candidate management• Carrying out all pre-employment checks

DBS

Hoople Recruitment offers a fast, efficient and flexible DBS (Disclosure and Barring Service) checking service to suit all schools and academies. We are in the top 100 Home Office umbrella bodies with staff trained to provide advice and guidance on all aspects of the DBS process, including risk assessment and handling of positive disclosures.

Our ‘check and go’ and ‘manage and monitor’ services are particularly popular with schools and academies and a number of payment options are available.

Please contact us for further advice and assistance.

Flexible teaching assistant serviceIn direct response to cuts to schools’ budgets and feedback from our school and academy customers, Hoople has recently introduced a new flexible resourcing service for teaching assistants and other classroom based support staff.

The service enables you to maintain your levels of teaching assistance but at a reduced cost. We are able to do this by employing any new teaching assistants on Hoople terms and conditions of employment, resulting in significant savings to your school or academy.

New

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Training

Training is essential to ensure that your staff have the skills and knowledge necessary to keep up with latest techniques and in order to comply with current legislation, as it applies to schools and academies.

Hoople Training is one of the largest providers of training courses in Herefordshire. We run a number of courses that are particularly relevant to schools and academies, most of which can be run either as scheduled courses at our training centre in Hereford or at your own premises. We are also able to design bespoke programmes to meet your specific needs.

Below is a selection of our most popular courses for schools and academies. If you can’t see what you are looking for or would like to discuss your particular needs, please do contact us.

First Aid courses – all accredited by the Association of First Aiders (AoFA)

Automated external defibrillator (AED) and cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) Level 2This course covers the topics regarded by Skills for Health as being important in maintaining good practice in the safe, prompt and effective administration of CPR and AED. It is recommended for first aiders in the schools’ or academies’ environment, who have access to a defibrillator. The course lasts for six hours.

Basic life support and anaphylaxis (Level 2)This course has been designed to provide the knowledge and skills needed to manage casualties with anaphylaxis and is aimed at staff who require additional training for the management of those (including children) who are affected by this potentially life threatening condition. The course lasts for three hours.

Emergency First Aid at Work (Level 2)This course is specifically for those who are new to first aid or have no previous training and provides participants with the skills to be a named first aider. The course lasts one day and refresher training is required every year (available through Hoople).

First Aid at Work (Level 3)This course will provide staff with the basic knowledge and practical skills to assess, identify, diagnose, treat and seek appropriate help for a variety of possible illnesses and injuries. The course lasts three days and refresher training is required within three years (available through Hoople).

Paediatric First Aid (Level 3)This course is for those who are designated first aiders to care for children, as specified in the Department of Health/Education and Children’s Services guidelines. It provides a basic knowledge and the practical skills required to assess, identify, diagnose, treat and seek appropriate medical help for a variety of possible illnesses and injuries. The course lasts two days and refresher training is required within three years (available through Hoople).

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Other training programmes

Safer recruitmentHoople is an accredited provider of regular safer recruitment workshops which meet the statutory requirements of Keeping Children Safe in Education (Department for Education, 2014). The workshops build on recommendations from the Bichard (2004) and Warner (1992) reports and affirm the statutory responsibility for all schools to have at least one member of staff safer recruitment trained. The course lasts for one day.

Moving and handlingThis course covers the theory and practical elements of safe moving and handling techniques. It is targeted at staff who have no previous training and can be tailored around individuals’ needs within the school or academy environment. The course lasts one day and an annual update/ refresher can be commissioned around individual needs.

SafeguardingThis course enables participants to gain an understanding of the legal framework and their roles and responsibilities with regard to safeguarding children. It helps staff to identify the factors that impact on vulnerable children along with the signs and risks associated with child sexual exploitation and the risks regarding safety on the internet and social networks. The course lasts for three hours.

BILD accredited physical intervention training Hoople Training is the first organisation in the country to be granted permission to run specialist physical intervention training under licence from PRICE Training. As such, we offer a number of training programmes designed for those who work with individuals who have a learning disability and are displaying behaviours that may challenge.

Each training programme is bespoke and developed following an audit of the school or academy’s specific needs. The programme is then made up from a choice of modules to complement mandatory sections and meet identified needs. All programmes are person-centred and have at their heart positive behaviour support. For further information, please do get in touch.

ApprenticeshipsHoople provides apprenticeship training in a number of subjects relevant to schools and academies. These include routes for teaching assistants and administrative staff.

Essentially, apprenticeships are work-based training programmes that combine on-the-job experience with classroom training. If you decide to take on an apprentice, you would have to pay them at least the National Minimum Wage for apprentices (£3.30 per hour, increasing to £3.40 from October 2016 for all those in the first year of their apprenticeship) and they would have to be employed by you for a minimum of one year and for 30 hours per week.

Hoople would provide the classroom element of the apprenticeship, which generally amounts to about two days per month.

We would also support your apprentice throughout the programme, providing all the necessary administration from recruitment and registration through to assessment and final certification.

Although apprenticeships are generally considered to be for school leavers, you may not know that anyone of any age can also be eligible for an apprenticeship. So, if you are keen to develop your existing teaching assistants or administrative/support staff, please contact us to discuss these options.

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Hoople LtdPlough LaneHerefordHR4 0LE

General enquiries: 01432 383678Hoople Recruitment or DBS enquiries: 01432 383003Hoople Training: 01432 383500 enquiries@hoopleltd.co.ukwww.hoopleltd.co.uk

“Hoople staff are really good. They’re incredibly supportive, objective and

respond quickly to any queries.

I have so much confidence in the people I work with at Hoople. They

have a wealth of knowledge and are experts in their subject areas.

I always feel secure that what they’re

saying is right. I would definitely recommend them in terms of the

services we buy”

- Alison MacArthur, Business Manager Wigmore School Academy Trust