Change is a constant for education organisations; the challenge is delivering meaningful, lasting, positive impact through change. There is a strategic imperative for many institutions to tackle financial pressures, shifting demographics, new technology and evolving student expectations which makes transformation essential.

Why education transformation cannot wait

The issues and risks facing education organisations vary across the sector. For schools and trusts, falling pupil numbers are becoming an increasing concern in some regions. The Department for Education’s 2026 projections suggest that England’s state-funded secondary school population will fall by 6.3% between 2025 and 2030, following the decline already experienced in primary education. This has a direct influence on how schools and trusts plan their estates, workforce, services and finances. At the same time, we saw the Education Estates Strategy promise a ‘decade of renewal’ and the employment rights act introducing requirements for workforce management, all of which add complexity to the operating context.

Over the next few years, we expect to see schools joining Trusts and potential Trust mergers, as schools in areas with reducing demographics seek to share costs through central services. We also expect to see some schools opting to leave Trusts because of dissatisfaction with a centralised direction of travel - demand for outsourced services may increase as re-establishing school level business enabling functions may be at too great a cost.

Regardless of legal form change – merger, de-merger, shared services – transformation and change are both needed to make schools and trusts fit for purpose with flexibility as to what that purpose may be.

Financial pressure is increasing

Universities are under continued financial pressure, as well as greater uncertainty over student enrolment. The Office for Students reported that 35.8% of institutions recorded a deficit in 2024-25 and that, without mitigating action, more than 40% could report a deficit for 2025-26. UK-wide international student numbers have continued to decline – in 2024-25 they had fallen by 10% from their 2022-23 peak.

Furthermore, the drive towards higher education delivering curricula linked to careers and industry needs, and the consequential funding reduction and student and parent perceptions of ‘value’ from higher education are matters which wrap around some of the resource led drivers of change.

Colleges, meanwhile, are seeing rapid growth in 16-18-year-old demand – in some cases faster than funding and physical capacity can accommodate. The Association of Colleges (AoC) reports that the number of 16-18-year-olds in education grew by about 5% in 2024-25 and another 4% in 2025-26, with further growth expected from autumn 2026.

Although pressures differ across schools, colleges and universities, the driver for change is the same: how to adapt operating models, focus limited resources and continue delivering the best possible outcomes for learners, staff and communities.

Technology and changing expectations are accelerating change

Alongside these financial and demographic pressures, many organisations are managing legacy systems and fragmented data while responding to changing expectations around digital and remote learning, course content, and the learner experience. This is in the context of how to teach learners about the responsible use of artificial intelligence both within education now and in their future careers.

These pressures are sometimes tackled as a series of separate problems that need to be addressed through individual projects or interventions. In our experience, this does not often yield the best results because education organisations are ecosystems where strategy, people, processes, technology, data, governance and culture continually affect one another.

A solution introduced in one area may result in unintended consequences elsewhere, while established habits and workarounds can quietly prevent change from taking hold. Whilst change can alter individual parts of an organisation; transformation must understand and strengthen the whole.

Transformation requires a whole-organisation approach

Meaningful transformation therefore starts with deciding what the organisation wants to achieve, followed by an honest assessment of how it currently operates: where decisions slow down, where accountability sits, how information flows and what behaviours are being reinforced.

This provides the foundation for designing future ways of working that enable strategic outcomes and address interconnected operational challenges as a whole, rather than responding to individual problems through a series of disconnected projects. Once the foundation is built, focus can then shift towards how the intended outcomes will be achieved through the movement from current to future state.

Why transformation activity does not always translate into impact

In our experience, three recurring patterns prevent transformation from delivering what was intended:

1. Doing the wrong things

Projects that respond to immediate pressures, funding opportunities or local priorities can often be set in motion without being designed as part of the organisation’s overall strategy. Projects should be shaped to achieve strategic outcomes and measurable benefits, and must be regularly reassessed, because strategies, priorities and external pressures evolve, and the transformation portfolio must evolve with them. Regular reviews allow organisations to reprioritise, reshape, pause or stop initiatives that no longer make the best use of limited resources.

2. Not getting the right things done

Successful delivery requires both sufficient capacity and the right capability, but transformation projects are often added to the workload of leaders and teams who are already running critical services. Complex changes to organisations can only be made by people who have experience of leading transformation, managing dependencies and turning strategic ambition into practical delivery – and the time to put that experience into practice. Without expert, accountable leaders with the skills and time to manage projects, priorities will drift and decision-making will slow down.

The under-resourcing of transformation by handing it to leaders who do not have the capacity and capability to achieve it is also a false economy. Costs avoided today lead to higher costs tomorrow, and a failure to achieve the benefits that the project was designed to create.

3. Making changes without changing how the organisation works

Introducing a new structure, system or process is just the beginning, not the transformation itself. The transformation comes when people adopt the change and it improves how the organisation operates, for example, through faster decision-making, fewer errors or reduced administrative burden. This should also lead to wider benefits, such as stronger financial sustainability, increased capacity for teaching and support, or better experiences and outcomes for learners.

Achieving this requires more than implementation. Co-design, communication, leadership behaviours, capability building and feedback must be designed into transformation from the outset, rather than added as an afterthought just before the launch.

A practical health check for the new academic year

If your organisation is already part-way through a transformation, the start of the academic year is a good time to step back and ask:

• Are our transformation initiatives directly aligned with our strategy and the outcomes that matter most to learners, staff and financial sustainability?
• Based on monitoring of progress to date, and evolving internal and external factors, should anything be stopped, paused, combined, reprioritised or added?
• Do we have the capacity, capability, governance and decision-making needed to deliver the transformation?
• Have we documented the dependencies and potential unintended consequences across the whole organisation?
• Are we measuring whether projects are achieving our goals and having a wider impact, including changes in behaviour and operational performance?

For organisations preparing to transform, addressing these questions early will make sure that projects are properly resourced, focused on the right outcomes and designed to deliver change that can take root across the organisation.

Make a new academic year’s resolution to review your transformation portfolio. We can provide an independent transformation health check, helping you test strategic alignment, delivery capacity, change readiness and benefits, and identify the practical actions needed to turn activity into sustainable impact.

Contact Alex Corck-Adelman or Lisa Randall to start the conversation.

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