Resource Maintenance

Unit 7

Introduction
A head is charged with the proper utilisation and care of all resources in his or her school. Some of these resources are intangible, for example, time, manpower and space; others require accurate recording and accounting, for example, finance; and a third category needs physical maintenance, for example, school buildings.

School resources

The concern, in this unit, is with learning about the maintenance of tangible resources.

Individual study time: 3 hours

Learning outcomes
By the end of this unit you should be able to:

· distinguish between different categories of resources
· explain the importance of maintaining resources
· describe the procedures to keep resources in your school properly maintained
· identify the procedures for obtaining general and replacement items of supply
· train and supervise inventory holders to care for items in their charge
· understand the principles of asset management
· keep stock and other relevant school records


Principles and constraints of resource maintenance

Principles
Each school head needs to understand the importance of the following basic principles with regard to the maintenance of resources in a school:

All school buildings, equipment and property must be well maintained.
A school head must be conversant with government financial regulations as far as it affects his / her responsibilities.
All school purchases must be correctly recorded and maintained in good order.
All school purchases must be used for the purpose for which they were bought.
Goods and materials must be frequently checked and controlled to ensure their effective use.
An up‑to‑date inventory must be kept in every location where there are school resources
There should be an up-to-date full school asset register with copies on and off site.

Constraints
School heads are faced with many constraints which affect their ability to manage school resources effectively. These constraints include:
· insufficient funding
· shortage of or no personnel trained to handle maintenance and supplies
· lack of effective supervision of staff responsible for maintenance and supplies in schools where this applicable.
· lack of storage space
· insecure storage facilities
· delays in the disposal of unserviceable stock items and equipment
· arrival of replacement orders delayed or wrongly delivered because of transport difficulties or inefficiencies
· lack of consultation between supplier and user
· increase in maintenance demand because of overuse of limited facilities and equipment.

Activity 7.1
As a newly appointed head you arrive at the school which has limited financial resources and find, amongst other deficiencies, many broken windows, blocked toilets, a sports field overgrown with grass and bush and a broken perimeter fence.

Which problem would you tackle first, and which last, and why?

Comments
The first step would be to make a list of the main problems to be tackled, and separate them out into different levels of urgency, noting those which for reasons of Health and Safety, would need to be tackled first in order not to put pupils and staff at risk. Blocked toilets would be an example of this.

You would need to do this in conjunction with your staff, including non‑teaching staff and your pupils. Then you would need to identify that which the school, the school community and other organisations could handle and those which should be reported to the Education Department for action. For those problems that the school and the school community could handle, you need to accept responsibility and ascertain what resources are needed, are available and could be easily obtained.

The next step would be to organise your resources, of people, materials and finance, to tackle the problems. Lastly, you would need to ensure that a regular system of maintenance is put into place, becoming part of the everyday regime of your school.

Asset Register
Each part of the school must have an inventory of capital items which are owned by the school. This would be updated and kept by the person or persons responsible for that area of the school. For example, a music teacher would be responsible for steel pans and the Home Economics teacher for cooking utensils and stoves. In addition, a central record of all of these items, copies of the original perhaps, would be kept in the possession of the Headteacher as a duplicate record. All of these records in total for all parts of the school form the Asset Register which is the log of all school possessions for which the Headteacher is ultimately responsible. It is good practice to keep one copy on site and another off site in case of fire, loss or damage for which insurance claims might have to be made.

Consumable and non‑consumable items
A consumable item is usually of a lesser cost and has a shorter life span or might be “used up” through normal wear and tear or usage. Although from a common sense point of view the school head may decide what is consumable and what is not, it is wise to consult local regulations. No single factor alone is used to determine the category. Three factors have to be considered, namely: cost, life span and whether replacements will be required through wear or usage. For example, a 20 litre container of dishwashing liquid might be considered to be a consumable item because it will eventually be used up, whereas a 40 kilogram cylinder of gas would be non-consumable capital item because it could be re-used and has a value of its own. However, the gas within it would be consumable.

Activity 7.2
For each of the items below indicate whether they are consumable or non‑consumable.

Chalk, Chalkboard, textbooks, school generator, school vehicle or boat, pencil, pupil chair, computer, beaker, fuel, dining hall table

Comment
Common sense will usually be enough to distinguish between consumable and non‑consumable goods, but there are borderline cases. For example, a pupil's workbook is consumable if it is being used more as an exercise book, than as a textbook.

Procedures for schools heads who are spending school funds
Heads must be aware of the need to observe some simple practices whenever funds are being received and expended. They must keep a Cash Book which must include all financial transactions and be kept fully up to date. This would ensure that all funds received from any source are recorded, and that all monies expended are accounted for. This is necessary as all monies received by a school become public funds.

It is also essential that all Heads have a ‘Consumable Stock Book’ ledger as well as the Asset Register already mentioned in the previous section. These ledgers would contain all particulars of the acquisition and distribution of capital goods and consumable stock.

Non-consumable or capital stock must be entered on the inventory forms and asset register as requested by the financial regulations. All capital items e.g. computers, stoves, gymnasium equipment should be clearly and indelibly marked unless they are not owned by or leased to the school.

See the Ministry of Education Guidelines and, in particular, Module 9 “School Records and Documents” for further information on the use of the cash book, asset register, inventories and consumable stock books.

Reflect for a moment on the reasons why it is necessary to have these records and the consequences for the school of not keeping them.

Comments
Reasons for maintaining these records include:
Accountability – to satisfy government, Ministry and local Department of Education regulations
Avoid financial impropriety or appearance thereof
Ensure stocks are available when needed

Stock‑keeping, which is critical to the maintenance of resources, is the process of maintaining inventory and asset register data on the quantity and condition of supplies and equipment in order to know what is available for issue and distribution, and also to provide a base for making decisions on procuring / requesting additional supplies.

Stock must be classified as consumable (capital goods) or non‑consumable and then recorded accurately in the appropriate ledger by the designated teacher and checked by the school head.
Consumable items, when issued against the signature of the user, are used and the use properly monitored.

Non‑consumable items are issued and entered by the officer in charge of supplies on the appropriate inventory form. The items and the form are checked at regular intervals.

A ledger for consumable items would include columns for these entries:

date of arrival of goods;
date of issue;
balance;
quantity received;
quantity issued.

Please check your local regulations to ensure you include everything which is required.

Ensuring resources are well maintained
It goes without saying that, when you have responsibility for the resources in your school, they will need to be well maintained and working properly to gain maximum benefit from them. This, in itself, can be very challenging because there are cost implications for repairing items which no longer work. Decisions will need to be made whether to repair existing items or use the money to buy new or different things. This will depend on your priorities.

It is a good idea, when faced with multiple requests for scarce resources, to decide what you would do immediately, what you would do in the next few days, in the medium term and the long term or even never.

The following are some of the resourcing issues and situations which a Headteacher may find within the school.

¨ Pupils are inexplicably hungry.
¨ There is a dramatic increase in the consumption of fuel in the kitchen.
¨ Teachers complain of the lack of chalk.
¨ Pupil chairs are moved from one classroom to another continually.
¨ Gas cylinders unexpectedly become empty in the science laboratories.
¨ Wheelbarrows are left on the agricultural garden.
¨ Football kit disappears from the washing line.
¨ There is an unexplained broken window in a classroom.
¨ Part of the school fence goes missing overnight.
¨ A water pipe bursts, flooding part of the school.

With most problems or crises there are two solutions; one is the immediate action which is required to bring the problem under control, the other is to find ways of preventing the same thing happening again. Only by developing formal procedures, which must include the regular, frequent inspection of physical plant and stock, can problems be kept to a minimum. Because there is so much to be looked at, much of the work of inspection should be delegated. However, no matter how thorough your procedures may be, critical incidents will still occur!
Sources of school maintenance

Activity 7.3
To the best of your ability, complete the diagram below. Fill in the blanks with people and agencies who you think are responsible for school maintenance. Attempt to give two examples of what they should maintain in the school.

To see this diagram, you will need to view the PDF version which can be downloaded from the sidebar on the right.

Comments
As you completed this exercise, you may have thought of areas where your standards of maintenance could be improved and of action you could take to effect improvement.

Preventative maintenance

You may have included some of the following on your list:-
· boundary fence
· sanitary facilities
· borehole
· planer
· computer
· classroom furniture
· First Aid kit
· school compound
· stairway
· gas oven
· generator
· access pits
· access road
· roofs of buildings
· fire extinguisher
· photocopier
· classroom walls and floors
· windows and doors

As the development of your school takes place, so the range of resources which require preventative maintenance will increase, as will the cost. The purchase of any resource, whether it is a building or a textbook, must take account of its durability and how much it will cost to maintain each year. An estimate of recurrent costs should be included in your yearly budget submissions to the Department of Education.

Checking stock
The frequency with which stock is checked and the interval of time between checks is important. You will need to record all of the items that you or your staff have checked, when you did so and any abnormalities that you found.


You should ensure that when you make checks that

a physical check is made at frequent intervals
a random check is carried out to ensure the balance of stock is correct
a check is made to ascertain when items were issued
a check is made that items issued were received and signed for
you indicate who the inventory holder is. It is important to note that all inventory holders should receive full instruction on their responsibilities.

Summary
Time, money and effort expended on resource maintenance and management is money well spent. A school head must manage all school resources efficiently in the interests of the school, and therefore full, proper and timely maintenance of these resources is imperative. In order to do this he or she must

be aware of the resources under his control.
have a maintenance schedule for these resources.
ensure that schedule is implemented.
be aware of the procedures involved in having maintenance carried out.
keep proper inventory and asset management records.
keep an up to date consumable stock book.