Why Schools Need to Start Planning Now for 2027/28

The greatest advantage of the summer isn’t simply that the school is quieter; it’s that leadership teams still have choices.

By October, many decisions have already become more difficult. Teaching commitments have been agreed, timetables are fixed, governors are working to an approved budget and any unexpected financial pressure has to be absorbed within an already busy term.

During the summer, however, there is still time to examine the evidence and decide whether the school’s assumptions remain valid.

Perhaps pupil recruitment has fallen short of target. The immediate impact may be a reduction in fee income, but the more important question is what follows. Does the budget still work? Can staffing levels be sustained? Is investment in planned projects still affordable? Are there alternative ways of achieving the same educational outcomes? How does this affect numbers in the next three/five years?

None of these questions should be answered in haste, which is precisely why they should be considered before September.

Financial planning is about scenarios, not spreadsheets

A budget should never be regarded as a fixed document. It is simply the financial expression of a series of assumptions.

Summer provides an opportunity to challenge those assumptions before they become embedded in the year ahead.

A school expecting 720 pupils that recruits 695 instead is not simply facing a shortfall in fee income. That reduction may affect staffing ratios, support services, capital expenditure and future investment. The earlier those implications are understood, the more options remain available.

Staffing decisions become harder the longer they are delayed

For most independent schools, staffing represents the largest single area of expenditure.

If financial modelling suggests that staffing costs need to reduce, the summer offers the best opportunity to consider the available options carefully. If, for example, redundancies need to form part of these cost reductions, the process would need to begin over the next few weeks to allow sufficient time for the appropriate process to take place ahead of 2027/28.

That may involve restructuring departments, redesigning roles, considering natural turnover, reviewing curriculum delivery or, where unavoidable, beginning formal consultation processes. These decisions require legal advice, careful planning and sensitive communication with staff and governors.

Delay rarely creates more options. More often it narrows them.

By waiting until well into the autumn term, schools can find themselves trying to manage financial pressures while simultaneously conducting consultation exercises, supporting staff, maintaining morale and delivering the educational experience parents expect.

None of those tasks becomes easier because they were postponed.

Market intelligence should inform every major decision

Admissions figures tell you what has happened. Market research helps explain why.

If enquiries have slowed, conversion rates have fallen or parents are choosing another school, those trends deserve investigation before next year’s recruitment cycle gathers pace.

Has a competitor repositioned itself?

Has the local demographic changed?

Are families becoming more price-sensitive?

Does your messaging still reflect what parents value?

Schools routinely invest hundreds of thousands of pounds in staffing and facilities. Investing a fraction of that amount in understanding the market that sustains the school is often one of the most commercially sensible decisions a governing body can make.

Governance deserves thinking time

Summer is also an excellent opportunity to step back from routine governance.

Many governing boards spend much of the academic year responding to papers, approvals and committee business. The quieter weeks provide space to ask more fundamental questions.

Does the board have the right balance of educational, commercial and financial expertise?

Are governors receiving information that genuinely supports strategic decision-making?

Is the risk register still an honest reflection of the school’s biggest challenges, or has it become a compliance document?

Would an external governance review identify blind spots before they become problems?

Good governance is not about holding more meetings. It is about ensuring the right conversations happen at the right time.

Strategy should be tested, not admired

Almost every independent school has a strategic plan.  The more useful question is when it was last challenged.

A strategy written three years ago may have assumed pupil growth, stable operating costs and a very different competitive environment. Those assumptions may no longer hold.

Summer provides an opportunity to revisit the evidence, refresh priorities and ensure that the strategy remains realistic rather than simply aspirational.

The strongest strategic plans are not the most ambitious.

They are the ones that continue to reflect reality.

Bringing clarity to the year ahead

For many schools, the challenge is not a lack of ambition. It is finding the time and capacity to step back far enough from day-to-day pressures to test whether that ambition is still grounded in current reality. Whilst an offsite away day supports clarity of decision making, its often hard to find time to undertake the actions in a busy term time week.

Financial modelling, market intelligence, governance review and strategic planning are often treated as separate exercises, when in practice they are all part of the same question: whether the school is still positioned as strongly as it needs to be for the years ahead.

That work is rarely urgent in the way that term-time issues are urgent, which is precisely why it so often gets deferred. Yet the consequences of deferring it tend to surface later, when options are fewer and decisions more constrained.

This is where a more structured, external perspective can be useful. Working with independent advisors can help bring together the financial, market and operational data that already exists within a school, but is not always viewed in a single, coherent way. It also creates the space to test assumptions that are otherwise difficult to challenge internally.

At MTM, we work with independent schools to support exactly this type of summer planning work – combining market research, financial and enrolment analysis, and strategic review to help leadership teams and governing bodies enter the new academic year with greater clarity about their position and priorities.

If you are using the summer to review strategy, stress-test your financial assumptions, or better understand your local market, we would be happy to have a conversation about how we might support that process.