The Independent School Podcast with Juliet Corbett

In this episode, I look at strategy away days, unpacking a series of top tips for you to employ to make your away days more effective, and to help you avoid hitting the many negative stereotypes that exist about the subject.  I begin by discussing why away days can be an important tool in your strategy toolbox and how they can bring people together to focus on decision-making without distraction. ...

In this episode, the last in a series where I identify the six essential questions that leaders of private schools should consider when trying to define their strategic approach, I ask: 'how do you communicate your strategy?' Through this episode, I explore how visual thinking can help your decision-making within the school and how it can help align the actions and decisions of staff in...

In this episode, the fifth in a series where I identify the six essential questions that leaders of private schools should consider when trying to define and shape their strategic approach, I ask: 'what are your tactics?' With this in mind, I explore how you can best form your operational plans to shape the strategic options that will deliver your vision for your school. I discuss how sc...

In this episode, I talk to Andrew Gordon-Brown, Head of Kingswood School, about strategic thinking in schools. Andrew switched from a career in banking and finance to one in teaching in 2003, becoming a teacher in Economics at Radley College. He moved to his current position in 2020 and has been most recently working on a strategy for Kingswood School.  We discuss Andrew's regard for strategi...

In this episode, the fourth in my series looking at six essential questions that you need to be able to answer in order to clarify your school's strategy, I ask: what are your strategic options? I begin by explaining what I mean by strategic options: the strategic level choices that you can make as a school leadership team or as school governing body that will shape the future of your school....

In this episode, I speak to Sam Davies, Head of Philanthropy at the Girls’ Day School Trust (GDST), the UK’s leading family of independent girls’ schools. During her career Sam has been responsible for annual giving activities at the University of Warwick, established a sustainable fundraising and alumni engagement operation from scratch at the University of Brighton and was awarded the CASE Cryst...

This is the third episode looking at the six essential questions that you, as a leader in an independent school, need to be able to answer in order to clearly define your school's strategy. This time I discuss what is holding your school back, what are the sticking points you need to identify and overcome to deliver your school's vision. I talk about how the identification of sticking po...

This week, I've been joined by Andrew Cook: chief development and commercial officer at Repton, a co-educational independent boarding school for pupils aged 3 to 18 whose history stretches back more than 450 years. I previously spoke to Andrew in the summer of 2020 about generating commercial income for schools. In this episode Andrew and I explore the subject of broadening the fundraising mi...

In this episode, I tackle the second essential question you need to be able to answer to help shape you school strategy. Last time I discussed how to identify and shape your vision for your school, but this time I'm focusing on what is working in your favour: the internal strengths and external opportunities that you can identify. These qualities I refer to as 'accelerators': positi...

In this episode, I welcome back John Claughton, former Chief Master of King Edward's School, Birmingham. John was a Classics master at Eton College from 1984 to 2001, where he was also in charge of cricket. He was Headmaster of Solihull School from 2001-2005, and then Chief Master of King Edward's School, Birmingham, his old school, from 2006 to 2016. More recently, he is author of the b...

This first episode of the third season is the start of a series of episodes exploring six essential questions that you need to answer to help you to clarify your strategy and secure your school's future. These questions are intended to help senior leaders structure their thoughts when it comes to planning their school strategy. In this episode, I look at the first of these strategic questions...

In this episode, the final of series 2, I explore how technology tools can boost your efficiency. I identify five invaluable tools that have helped me be more productive over the past year. The first tool I have discovered is Calendly, a diary management website that helps me to set up meetings with other people seamlessly, ideal for schools. Calendly allows me to set up various types of meeting o...

The 'moves management' system is a great way for you to boost your success in the area of major gift fundraising. Moves management is a way of efficiently but effectively managing the major donors, or prospects, you have in your school community, so in this episode I want to explore what the system is, why you should use it and to outline a five step process to get you started. Firstly,...

In this episode, I talk to Professor Julie Hodges of Durham University Business School about how school leaders can lead and sustain successful organisational change within their institutions. Professor Hodges is a worldwide expert on change in organisations, particularly in the role and impact that people play during transformations. I start by asking Professor Hodges for her definition of organi...

In this episode, I explore five shifts you may need to make in your fundraising mindset in order to improve your results. I discuss how you can identify five limiting and unhelpful beliefs that you might hold about fundraising and I share with you, through my own experience as a fundraiser, how you can overcome them.    The first of these limiting beliefs is that asking for money is the equivalent...

In this episode, I examine how the flexible feasibility study can be critical to the success of a fundraising campaign. I explore the challenges you may face in justifying the budget for a feasibility study, the advantages of using a consultant, but how, by adopting the 'flexible' feasibility study, development offices often have the capability to do some of this work themselves. Firstly...

In this episode I talk to Emily Clarke, Director of Development at Highgate School, about fundraising for community partnerships. Expanding on previous episodes about the building blocks of bursary strategy and my exploration of the real situation schools face getting bursaries established in my conversation with Bart Wielenga, the Head of Blundell's School, I move on to considering community...

In this episode, I explore how social marketing, the application of commercial marketing techniques to influence behaviours in ways which benefit communities of people, can give us a different perspective on our work in independent schools. Specifically, I outline how this might be applied to the area of alumni relations and fundraising within education. Based on the quantitative and qualitative r...

Following my exploration (in episodes 12 to 16) of strategy and strategic thinking in the context of the fast pace of change and the high levels of uncertainty in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, in this episode I look at ways that you can embed a culture of strategic thinking in your school.  I outline the importance of strategic thinking by drawing on the research report I created in 2018 call...

In last week's episode, I used the four building blocks of strategy to identify the key choices that governors and heads need to confront and make when they are crafting a robust bursary strategy. In this episode, I welcome Bart Wielenga, Head of Blundell’s School in Tiverton in Devon, UK to talk about how this model can be practically used and how we have worked together to develop a robust...

In this episode, I explore how two of my passions can be combined: strategy and the importance of focusing your resources on the things that will make a difference, and bursary provision within independent schools and the way that it can impact on social mobility. I consider the questions that you need to ask and the options you have going forward as you craft your bursary strategy. I begin by def...

In this episode, the first of season 2, I talk to Lucy Gower, the director and founder at Lucidity and founder of The Lucidity Network. Through her work as a coach, trainer and facilitator Lucy has given thousands of professionals worldwide the confidence and tools to think creatively, develop ideas and make their innovations happen.  We discuss how independent schools can be innovative about thei...

Over the first 16 episodes of this podcast, I've explored a wide range of tactics, strategies and best practice to help independent schools strengthen their income streams. I've interviewed a number of experts in their field, sharing their advice and practical approaches to their roles. And in the last five episodes, I built a Strategy Toolkit to help schools become more strategic both d...

This podcast episode looks at ways to involve every staff member in strategic thinking, so they can see how their day-to-day decisions help deliver the strategy that has been developed. To this end, I developed the Strategic Thinking in Three Dimensions framework, a system that is focused on strategy implementation. The framework is divided into three 'dimensions': The first dimension, &...

Strategic thinking is essential for navigating the fast-changing world we live in. In this episode, I look at ways you can supercharge your strategic thinking skills, and make yourself invaluable to your organisation. It is possible to define five key ways of thinking about a problem. Combine these, and you have a more strategic approach. The first area I explore is systems thinking: visualising c...