Productivity Pitches #5: Schools

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Photos from this event are available on our Flickr.

Productivity in public services has never been more important. Most services are struggling to return to pre-pandemic performance levels, and the government has indicated that spending will be tight from April 2026 onwards. Improvements in performance will likely come from frontline workers finding new, innovative ways of delivering services.  

So what can be done to improve productivity? By highlighting outstanding examples of innovation across public services, Productivity Pitches, a series of events hosted by the IfG, aims to share and support ways to improve performance levels.

This event was the fifth in the series and focused on schools.

Each speaker had 10 minutes to present their innovation, followed by 10 minutes of audience questions. The chair and a guest from the Productivity Institute – who are kindly supporting this event series – then brought together the common themes from the pitches and discussed the lessons for improving productivity.  

The speakers for this edition of Productivity Pitches were:  

• George Barlow, Principal of Belgrave St. Bartholomew’s Academy on the outcome of providing every pupil and teacher with a tablet.
• Steph Hamilton, Director of The Engagement Platform part of the ImpactEd Group which run frequent School Employee surveys that allows schools and MATs to compare their employee satisfaction to peers and use this to improve engagement, satisfaction and retention and Cara Ackroyd, Executive Principal at Outwood Grange Academies Trust. Cara leads on school engagement work across Outwood Grange Academy Trust. The trust have been founding partners of TEP and have integrated the use of the data into their strategy and processes to support outcomes.
• Lauren Wilson, Head of Marketing and Communications at The Thinking Schools Academy Trust on consolidating communication and marketing functions. Allowing them to standardise their marketing materials and learn what works before rolling it out further.

The event was chaired by Nick Davies, Programme Director at the Institute for Government. Professor Anna Vignoles, Director of the Leverhulme Trust and Policy Advisor at The Productivity Institute Policy Unit, joined to discuss the common themes.

Productivity Pitches is kindly supported by The Productivity Institute.