A new phase for operational excellence in education
The Institute of School Business Leadership (ISBL) has today announced that it is evolving to become the Centre for Education Operational Excellence (CEOE), marking a significant new phase in how it supports schools and trusts.
Drawing on the established success of ISBL, the expanded portfolio includes three new exciting hubs under the banner of the Centre for Education Operational Excellence (CEOE), broadening work to support schools and trusts to operate more effectively, sustainably, and at scale.
At a time of increasing complexity across the sector, with schools and trusts navigating financial pressures, workforce challenges and rising expectations, there is growing recognition that how organisations operate is critical to sustaining and building on educational success.
At the heart of this evolution is a clear principle: operational excellence enables educational excellence.
Approaches to areas such as procurement, finance, workforce deployment and data use can vary significantly, even between otherwise similar organisations, highlighting the need for a more structured and consistent approach. This bold new initiative builds on more than three decades of ISBL’s experience to bring greater coherence to what can often be a fragmented and inconsistent landscape of operational practice.
CEOE will operate through an interconnected model built around four core hubs:
- ISBL as our practitioner-focused Professional Excellence Hub: continuing ISBL’s commitment to high-quality professional standards and development by delivering the high-quality, cutting-edge professional development offer that members know and value.
- Solutions Hub: delivering practical, high-impact support and services, including its Operational Excellence Framework and diagnostic model that helps schools and trusts identify strengths, prioritise improvement and access tailored support. This hub also brings together our network of trusted partners, ensuring access to specialist expertise where it is needed most.
- Research Hub: generating robust, evidence-based insights to inform best practice, shape policy thinking and drive innovation in education operations.
- International Hub: extending its reach globally, enabling knowledge exchange and collaboration to raise operational standards across education systems worldwide.
These elements work together as an interconnected ecosystem, linking insight, delivery, capability and evidence to drive sustained improvement.
By strengthening operational foundations and providing a structured approach to improvement across areas such as resource planning and deployment, productivity and cost control and more, CEOE aims to:
- support more consistent and scalable practice
- improve efficiency, resilience and sustainability
- enable schools and trusts to deliver greater impact for pupils
Stephen Morales, Chief Executive, said:
“Schools and trusts are achieving a great deal in increasingly complex circumstances. What is becoming clearer than ever is that strong operational practice is critical to sustaining that success.
“Our evolution into the Centre for Education Operational Excellence reflects the next phase of our work. It allows us to move beyond supporting individuals alone to also supporting whole organisations to operate more effectively, fully aligning operations with educational outcomes, financial sustainability and long-term success.
“CEOE works as both a standard setter and an enabler, defining what good looks like while supporting schools and trusts to achieve it in practice.
“This is about creating the conditions in which great teaching and leadership can thrive — because operational excellence enables educational excellence.”
To find out more about CEOE, or to explore an operational health check, please visit: https://www.ceoe.org.uk/.
ENDS
Notes to editors:
- The Institute of School Business Leadership (ISBL) is the professional body for school business leaders in England.
- ISBL is evolving to become the Centre for Education Operational Excellence (CEOE) as part of a broader expansion of its work. Through CEOE, ISBL will continue to play its central role in professional development, leadership support and setting standards for the sector.
- CEOE will be formally launched at the Schools and Academies Show on 7 May, where further detail will be shared with the sector.
- About CEOE’s Solutions Hub:
- The Solutions Hub supports schools and trusts to identify operational strengths, prioritise improvement and access tailored support.
- At its core is a structured diagnostic: an operational health check designed as a supportive, improvement-focused process. This is based on CEOE’s OpEx Framework and enables schools and trusts to reflect on their current approach, understand their level of operational maturity and identify strengths, opportunities and priority areas for development.
- Schools and trusts can begin with a no-pressure triage conversation to explore their priorities and determine the most appropriate next steps.
- From there, the Solutions Hub connects insight to action, bridging the gap between diagnosis and implementation by providing access to targeted, specialist support.
- Where the diagnostic identifies a need for support in a specific domain, CEOE will connect schools and trusts with relevant, carefully selected partners (trusted experts with deep, domain-specific expertise) to explore how best to address this area.
- CEOE’s Solutions Hub partners are:
- Communications, change management and strategic counsel: Tiffany Beck OBE, Head of Education, PLMR
- Estates and infrastructure: Robert Gould, Partner, Barker Associates
- Risk management: Jo Taylor, Executive Director, Howden Insurance
- Finance: Will Jordan, Co-Founder and CEO, IMP Software
- People: Phil Watt, Director, Propelo
- HR and legal: Jean Boyle, Partner, Head of Employment, HR, Immigration and Joint Head of Education, Stone King
- Data and insights: Rebecca Fowkes, Senior Director - Growth & Marketing, VenturEd Solutions
- About the OpEx Framework:
- The CEOE OpEx Framework is a structured, evidence-informed approach to diagnosing, improving and sustaining operational performance across organisations to enable better outcomes. This has been based on years of learning and research in other sectors and industry, contextualised for education.
- The OpEx Framework spans the 5 beams of:
- Culture
- People
- Productivity
- Systems and processes
- Continuous improvement
- Underneath those 5 beams sit the 10 key domains which underpin operational excellence:
- Impact on teaching and learning
- Process and quality control
- Resource planning and deployment
- Data, performance measurement, and action
- Skills and human performance
- Operations management capability
- Operational risk and quality assurance
- Productivity and cost control
- Technology effectiveness
- Continuous improvement
- For media enquiries, please contact: tiffany.beck@plmr.co.uk