Rethinking Education Through a Business Lens

Schools today are increasingly expected to operate like businesses. They are given financial autonomy, held to performance targets, required to manage risk, oversee large budgets, handle stakeholder relationships and operate with measurable efficiency. And yet, in most cases, they are not led like businesses.

Most school leaders are educators. Many are exceptional educators. But educational leadership and business leadership are not the same discipline. You cannot remove local authority infrastructure, increase accountability and operational responsibility, and then assume leaders will instinctively possess expertise in organisational design, process optimisation, systems thinking, strategic communication and financial modelling.

It does not work like that.

In any other sector, if an organisation was struggling with efficiency, communication breakdowns or stakeholder dissatisfaction, we would examine the system design. We would analyse workflows. We would redesign processes. We would introduce operational standards, automation, escalation pathways and customer experience frameworks.

Instead, in education, we often hear a familiar response: there are simply too many pupils, too many demands, too little capacity. I have been told directly that there are too many students on the books to communicate properly with all parents. That statement alone should stop policymakers in their tracks.

If any private sector organisation declared it had too many customers to communicate with effectively, the solution would not be to accept failure. It would be to redesign the model. Parents are not interruptions. They are stakeholders.

And “school business manager” as a title does not resolve this structural gap, because in many cases the business manger role is focused on finance and administration rather than strategic organisational leadership. There is a substantial difference between managing accounts and premises and designing high-functioning institutions.

If academies are to operate with autonomy, then genuine business expertise must be embedded within leadership structures. Operational excellence, communication systems and strategic design are not optional extras. They are fundamental.

It is from this systems perspective that the recent announcement of significant additional SEND funding should be viewed.

The government’s commitment of billions towards SEND support, specialist expertise and earlier intervention is undoubtedly welcome. Families navigating the system know how overstretched it has become. Increased investment matters. But funding alone does not address structural design.

If the underlying model of education remains unchanged, then we are simply adding more scaffolding around a structure that was never built to accommodate every type of learner in the first place. Children are not problems to be managed. They are individuals to be understood.

By the time a child reaches the age of sixteen, they have spent more than 15,000 hours inside the education system. That represents over a fifth of their waking childhood. If that system aligns with how their brain works, those hours build confidence and competence. If it does not, those same hours can quietly reinforce a narrative of inadequacy. We are not talking about minor misalignment. We are talking about thousands of formative hours shaping identity, self-belief and direction.

Here is what I believe should be the bold policy move of our time. Every child, early in their education journey, should have access to a modern, meaningful assessment of how their brain works, not to judge them, label them or restrict them, but to understand them.

In business, we accept that people operate differently. We build teams around strengths. We use personality profiling, behavioural insights, skills mapping and role alignment because we know that when people are placed where they naturally thrive, performance and wellbeing improve. Why are we not applying the same intelligence to education?

Imagine a system where every child had access to a robust psychometric assessment exploring cognitive preferences, processing style, learning strengths, communication patterns, attention profile and motivational drivers. Imagine those insights forming the basis of a bespoke learning pathway that evolves alongside them throughout their education. Essential foundations such as literacy, numeracy and life skills would remain, but delivery would be structured around how that child learns best rather than forcing conformity to a single dominant style.

If we implemented this early, properly and consistently, it would transform education. It would not create identical outcomes, but it would create equitable opportunity. Children would grow up understanding who they are, how they work and what they are capable of, rather than internalising the belief that they are somehow deficient.

By the age of eleven, most children already show clear indicators of what brings them alive. Some love building, fixing and understanding how things work. Some are drawn to creative expression. Others thrive in practical, social environments. Some demonstrate entrepreneurial instinct. Some are naturally suited to land-based work, craft industries or technical disciplines. Yet we continue to channel almost every child through an academically dominant secondary experience, with vocational pathways delayed or treated as secondary options. This is where we waste years of potential. Years that could have built mastery. Years that could have strengthened confidence. Years that could have produced young people entering adulthood already equipped with real skills and direction.

And then we ask why so many teenagers feel disengaged or lost.

We should be introducing meaningful skills training from the age of eleven, not as a fallback route but as an equally prestigious pathway alongside academic study. Young people should have the opportunity to explore practical and vocational disciplines early, discovering where their natural strengths lie while building real competence and confidence. Teach electrics and plumbing. Teach farming and food production. Teach bricklaying and construction, floristry, painting and decorating, digital trades, design and engineering. Introduce entrepreneurship, business fundamentals, communication and negotiation skills as core components of learning. Education should prepare young people not only to pass exams, but to build lives, careers and identities rooted in capability and purpose.

Taking this further, we should be brave enough to explore an even more transformative model: schools that function as living, working environments where pupils learn by actively running aspects of the institution itself. Imagine a system where students rotate through real responsibilities that keep a school operating. One week they might work in the kitchen, learning about nutrition, budgeting, procurement and food preparation. Another week they could support site maintenance, gaining insight into basic electrics, plumbing systems and building safety. They could review utility bills to understand energy consumption and costs, examine school finances at an age-appropriate level to learn how budgets are constructed, and take responsibility for cleaning and facilities management, developing standards, efficiency and teamwork.

These would not be tokenistic exercises, but meaningful experiential learning that builds practical life skills, commercial awareness and genuine accountability. Education becomes something lived rather than observed. It teaches dignity in work, respect for shared environments and an understanding of how organisations function in the real world. Instead of separating learning from life, we integrate the two, creating young people who leave school not only academically prepared but capable, self-reliant and commercially literate.

If a child wants to study Shakespeare in depth, encourage it wholeheartedly. But if they do not, is it truly life-altering if they focus instead on their vocation? Our curriculum feels tired, recycled decade after decade with insufficient courage to question its structure.

This reluctance to challenge hierarchy is visible in how we treat qualifications. We do not simply prioritise academic routes. We actively look down on alternatives. I have witnessed BTECs, including creative and demanding qualifications such as music, treated as lesser choices. Students are subtly positioned as having taken an easier path.

This cultural snobbery is deeply damaging. It undermines young people, diminishes entire industries and reinforces a narrow definition of success.

GCSEs remain heavily dependent on timed written examinations that reward a specific form of performance. They fail to capture applied competence, creativity and practical intelligence. Assessment should expand to include portfolio work, long-term projects, applied demonstrations of skill and genuine parity between academic and technical achievement.

If we continue to treat vocational learning as second best, we will continue to damage self-worth and fail to build the workforce our economy requires. The goal of education should not be to produce children who can all perform in the same way. The goal should be to produce young people who understand who they are, what they are good at and how they can contribute meaningfully to society.

Additional SEND funding is welcome. But real reform will only come when we stop retrofitting children into a system that was not designed for them, and start designing an education system that fits the child.