Series 3 — Solution · Paper 5
The School
Carol has been the school business manager at a primary school in Coventry for eleven years. In that time she has collected payment for 340 school trips, 1,200 school dinners per week, four uniform sales per year, after-school clubs, photography day, the Christmas fair, the summer fair, the book fair, and an annual residential trip to an outdoor activity centre that costs £180 per child and involves chasing payment from 57 families across a six-week window.
Most of this happens in cash. Cash in envelopes, sent in children’s bags, collected by class teachers, counted in classrooms, brought to the office in bundles that don’t always add up to what they should. Some of it happens via ParentPay, the school’s online payment platform, which parents use reluctantly because it requires a separate login that most of them have forgotten. Some of it happens via bank transfer, which requires Carol to match each transfer to a child’s name using a reference that parents frequently get wrong.
The residential trip this year had eleven families who paid late, three who paid the wrong amount, two who paid via bank transfer with no reference at all, and one who sent cash in an envelope six weeks after the deadline with a note that said sorry, been a difficult few months.
Carol processed all of it. She has always processed all of it.
The school moved to the scheme in January. Carol set up payment requests for the spring term — dinner money, the Year 4 trip to the science museum, after-school football club, and the book fair. Each one had a title, an amount, and a due date. She sent a link to each family via the school’s existing communication app.
Each parent opened the link on their phone, saw their child’s name, the amount, and what it was for, and approved the payment. Most of them did it within twenty-four hours. Some did it the same evening. The dinner money — which runs as a weekly standing arrangement — was set up once and ran without any further action from the parent or from Carol.
By the end of the first week of term, 94 percent of spring term payments had been received. The remaining 6 percent received an automatic reminder three days before the due date. By the due date, the figure was 99 percent.
Carol did not send a single chasing message.
The Year 6 residential in June will cost £195 per child. Fifty-three families. Carol has set up a payment arrangement that allows families to pay in three instalments — February, April, and June — rather than the full amount at once. Each instalment draws automatically on the agreed date. Families who need a different arrangement can contact Carol directly; for everyone else, the instalments run without anyone having to remember.
She expects fewer than five conversations about payment for the residential this year. Last year there were twenty-three.
The cash has not disappeared entirely. Some parents prefer it. Carol still accepts it. But the envelope on the teacher’s desk is now the exception rather than the rule, and the count at the end of the day is small enough that it no longer takes up a Friday afternoon.
She has not changed what she does. She still runs the school’s finances, manages the suppliers, handles the payroll, and deals with everything that falls outside the category of teaching. She does all of this with the same number of hours she had before.
What she does not do any more is spend a significant portion of those hours moving money from one place to another and writing down the names of people who have paid.
The money arrives. The records are automatic. The children go on the trips.