Jo Marchant

Following a career in the public, private and charitable sectors, Jo joined the education sector in 2009 as Business Manager at one of the largest special needs schools in Kent. Jo was responsible for leading all aspects of the school’s business management and estates functions as well as having input into decisions regarding teaching and learning. Jo left this position in June 2018 to become a Business Management Consultant at Herts for Learning, a not-for-profit education services company. In January 2019 Jo set up her own business management consultancy, JSM Consultancy Services, offering consultancy to schools and academies on all aspects of school business management, estates and health and safety.

Between 2021 and 2023 Jo worked as Head of Estates for an 8 school multi-academy trust (MAT) based in Bromley and Kent. The MAT had 1 infant, 3 primaries, and 4 secondary schools with buildings across the spectrum from Grade II listed built in the 1880s to a school built in 2019. Jo’s responsibilities in this role included buildings compliance, management of building projects, liaison with and management of contractors, provision of bespoke training courses for the MAT’s 21 site staff via the twice termly Site Staff Forum that she set up, site staff recruitment, induction and development, and review of site staffing structures across the Trust. Jo was also the MAT’s Health & Safety Officer with responsibility for the health and safety of 7,500 staff and students.

Jo holds Masters’ degrees in Leadership (MA) and Business Administration (MBA) as well as a Certificate in Accounting, the National General Certificate in Safety & Health (NEBOSH), and the Certificate and Diploma in School Business Management. Jo is a Specialist Leader of Education in School Business Management and Financial Management. Jo became an accredited School Resource Management Advisor in December 2018 and has carried out 16 deployments in academies, maintained schools and an alternative provision unit.

Jo is committed to continuing professional development, both her own and others’, and has presented at the ASCL Business Leaders’ Conference, the Institute of School Business Leadership regional and national conferences, the Schools & Academies Show, to school business professionals’ groups, at Henley Business School on the MA Leadership course, and to the Association of School Business Professionals International. In 2016, Jo was awarded ISBL’s Chief Executive’s Award for Exceptional Contribution to the School Business Management Profession for her work in raising the profile of special schools and carrying out research for the benefit of the school business profession.

Jo is a regular contributor of articles for The Voice, the Institute of School Business Leadership members’ magazine, and has had several articles published in School Business Affairs, the Association of School Business Officials International members’ magazine. She contributed 4 of her articles for inclusion the “The School Business Manager’s Handbook” written by Hayley Dunn, ASCL’s School Business Leadership Specialist published in 2018. Jo also writes blogs for Henley Business School’s Centre for Leadership. Jo’s first book, “The School Premises Handbook” was published on 23 June 2023.

Jo is a Fellow of the Institute of School Business Leadership and served as a Trustee between 2019 and 2022. She is a co-ordinator for The Trust Network and was instrumental in lobbying the Department for Education to set up the National Network of Special Schools in 2021. Jo is a member of the British Educational, Leadership, Management and Administration Society (BELMAS) and presented the results of her MA Leadership dissertation research study on school business management and leadership at their conference in 2018. In March 2021 Jo became the first school business practitioner to have her research on the opportunities and constraints for school business managers in the state sector in England published in a peer reviewed journal, Management in Education. The article can be viewed here https://doi.org/10.1177/0892020621999679