In this latest insights paper from Barnett Waddingham with the ISBA we explore the benefits and sample use cases for the sector’s flagship benchmark and scenario planning tool Data Navigator for Schools, and we clarify why this year is particularly important for independent schools to participate.
Learn about:
- The history of the ISBA Data Navigator for Schools.
- The importance of participating in the 2024-25 edition of the tool.
- How ISBA and Barnett Waddingham are making it even simpler for schools to participate with our pre-fill service.
- Benefits for bursars of participating.
- Benefits for heads and governors of participating.
- Case study: Assessing your pupil attraction pipeline and capacity fill.
- Case study: Strategic decisions considering shared services.
- Case study: Total reward – employee pensions and benefits assessments.
- New feature example: benchmark data on non-pension benefits across health and wellbeing, travel, and financial incentives.
Download the insights paper here or by clicking on the image below.
For bursars
For bursars and the senior leadership teams, the benefits of Data Navigator include:
- The only ISBA benchmark data, benefitting the whole industry.
- Free for ISBA members for all the core benchmark data and functionality.
- The only tool that lets you select your own comparison group for your benchmarks in real time. It’s your data.
- The only benchmark of your marketing funnel for attracting pupils.
- The only benchmark updated in real-time as soon as schools provide or update data.
- Fully interactive modern dashboard to let you do your analysis and easily export the results for your own communications. It’s your data.
- Comprehensive data across
- Finance KPIs.
- Expenditure across staff, running costs, CapEx, sales and marketing, borrowing, pensions, and business rates. (This includes benchmarks on pensions, including DC contribution rates and more.)
- Income across fees, investments, educational, and other.
- Marketing and pupil attraction with conversion rates across eight steps in the pipeline.
- School data including capacity fill and local population affluence.
- Continuously developed in partnership with ISBA and backed by Barnett Waddingham’s 1700+ strong organisation. We delivered ten feature releases since the launch in June 2023 in response to feedback from bursars.
- Safe and confidential, designed for commercial confidentiality and hosted by FCA-regulated firm in our secure, ISO-certified data environments.
For heads and governors
For heads, governors and other stakeholders, the benefits of the school participating in Data Navigator for Schools include:
- Integrated scenario planning1 so the board can immediately assess the effect of projects on the school’s finances and evaluate options to balance or strengthen the finances.
- Comprehensive industry benchmark across pupil attraction, finance and operations against bespoke comparison group of schools, giving the board factual data on the performance of the school. Good governance gives the board access to competitive data, even when the school is doing well.
Footnotes
Scenario planning is part of the Enhanced version costing £1,250 per school per year. The benchmark data remains free forever.↩︎