If you’ve spent your career working in education, hearing the words “business model” might make you want to pull out a lesson plan and sigh. Phraseology like “business models” and “customer-base” can sound corporate. Educators are used to rubrics, curriculums, pupils and parents – not always talking about "value propositions" or "key resources".
If you are in education, chances are you did not enter this field thinking you would ever need to know how to run a business. After all, a teacher’s primary mission is shaping minds, not increasing income.
But schools do need leadership and they need to adapt. Educational establishments have budgets, stakeholders, and a rapidly changing world to contend with. Moreover, when it comes to “persistent problems” like educational inequality, the challenge extends far beyond what schools can tackle in isolation. Schools are increasingly expected to address issues such as poverty, trauma, and mental health, all while continuing to focus on education in the orthodox definition of the term.
This is where things are made more complex. Schools can’t just “teach” their way out of these issues, they need a structured way to think about their role in tackling them. I have argued before that we simply cannot “pedagogise out of poverty” (Harris, 2024).
The deeper I delve into my work on tackling inequality, the more I see that schools need to be able to adapt and make use of some of the methodologies being used well by other sectors.
One such methodology is the business model canvas (see Osterwalder, 2013). The BMC helps organisations (including schools) to map-out the critical elements they need to deliver value. It is a one-page tool that forces you to clarify your value proposition, who you’re serving, and the resources you need.
In the past, schools focused almost entirely on academics. But today, schools are about so much more: they’re community hubs, support systems, and often the first line of defence against inequality.
Where I work, at Tees Valley Education, we often say that we are not experts but we do claim a commitment to developing expertise alongside others. The BMC enables educators to rethink what resources they already have and how they can leverage these to make a bigger impact.
The ‘persistent problem’ of poverty is complex
Educational inequality is deeply intertwined with issues like poverty and trauma. Schools alone cannot tackle these problems.
BMC and other tools (e.g. theory of change), can help schools to consider their "key partners" – who else can they work with? A local food bank? Mental health providers? Social workers?
Schools don’t have to (and cannot) address inequality alone, but they can map-out who their allies are and how to collaborate for a broader impact.
It is why, at Tees Valley Education, we devote resource and time to thinking about our partnerships and staff development across our whole organisation and at all levels.
Partnerships are beginning to rapidly sharpen our understanding and response to local need. Working with local and independent businesses is helping us to form hyper-local projects to help tackle barriers to things like reading which we know can be impacted by poverty and inequality.
Schools, using tools like the BMC, might better establish partnerships with community organisations to address these various aspects.
In education, we focus on “inputs” (like classroom resource) and “outputs” (like GCSE results). However, the BMC encourages a more holistic view. How are you connecting with the community? What channels are you using to engage parents, local businesses, and other stakeholders? Thinking like this might further push schools to look beyond academics to value the connections and support systems they build within the community. While academic research and thinking is invaluable, it is only one lens on an ever-increasing complex sector that educators serve in.
Meyers (2022) argues that when schools broaden their scope and think more like social enterprises – building partnerships and considering broader societal challenges – they have a better chance of addressing the root causes of inequality. It’s certainly proving to be our experience at Tees Valley Education through our PLACE (People, Learning and Community Engagement) work.
Doing more with less
Schools, particularly those in severe areas of need, are often forced to do increasing amounts with less direct resource. Teams and leaders must strategically assess how they use their limited resources.
Are funds primarily supporting the most vulnerable students? Could partnerships or community resources stretch the budget further?
In theory, this should be a bedrock of how funding such as the Pupil Premium are used in schools. In fact, research dictates that the schools making this work most effectively are those that are acutely aware of poverty-related barriers to learning and then using the funds to address the specific barriers that they can – as opposed to throwing it generically at a range of strategies in the blind hope it will have some kind of impact, even if you can’t measure it.
The OECD (2018) stresses that educational inequality is often linked to funding gaps. By carefully mapping out costs and identifying areas where schools can form strategic partnerships or secure additional funding, educators can create more sustainable models for supporting vulnerable students and tackling inequality.
At Tees Valley Education, we’ve spent considerable time (in collaboration with others) thinking about businesses, the communities that we serve, and how to be more for those that need it the most. This has been complex and we are uncompromisingly curious about this.
In a busy and crowded marketplace of education it is hard to know what an educator’s USP is. The world is changing fast, and schools are being asked to adapt in real-time. They are expected not only to teach but also to support children, young people, families and communities facing an array of social challenges.
Adopting models from the world of business can offer a flexible framework that helps schools rethink their role in real-time. It’s not a static plan but a living document that can be adjusted as challenges and opportunities evolve.
Strategic business models are hard – especially for those of us from the education world. But if we look at tools like the BMC as resources rather than external ways of “doing things differently”, we might find a way to make that big impact we want in our communities.
- Sean Harris is a doctoral researcher with Teesside University investigating the ways in which teachers and leaders can help to address educational inequality in schools. He is director of people, learning and community engagement (PLACE) at Tees Valley Education, an all-through multi-academy trust serving communities in the North East of England. This blog is an edited version of an article which first appeared on Sean’s blogspot https://thatpovertyguy.substack.com/. Find Sean’s previous articles and podcast appearances for SecEd via www.sec-ed.co.uk/authors/sean-harris
- Sean Harris will be exploring the importance of understanding and applying place-based approaches to tackling educational disadvantage at the 17th National Pupil Premium Conference on March 28, 2025. Visit www.sec-ed.co.uk/events/17th-national-pupil-premium-conference-birmingham
Further information & resources
- Harris: I’m not in Kansas anymore: What I’ve learned ‘so far’ about doing a PhD in child poverty, That Poverty Guy Blog, 2024: https://thatpovertyguy.substack.com/p/im-not-in-kansas-anymore
- Meyers: Why business models matter for schools, Strategyzer, 2022.
- OECD: Educational Inequality and Socioeconomic Outcomes, 2018.
- Osterwalder: A better way to think about your business model, Harvard Business Review, 2013: https://hbr.org/2013/05/a-better-way-to-think-about-yo