The rising costs of key staples, such as food and energy, are continuing to have an impact on schools across the country, as business managers, bursars and senior leadership teams look to control their budget for the second half of the academic year.

What can schools do in order to be smarter when purchasing food items? And, importantly, how to do it without impacting on availability, quality, nutritional standards or exceeding budgets?

Below are some practical tips that school leadership teams can consider:

It is not often that I hear news of a new directive from the European Commission that I can get excited about. Frequently, new rules from the EU are loaded with lots of administration or additional layers of red tape that seem more of burden than a benefit. But talking with legal expert Paul Henty recently, he told me of a new legislation that is set to come into force by 2016, affecting the way in which invoicing is managed in contracts governed by EU procurement directives.

In summary, the European Commission has published a draft directive for the creation of a ‘standardised e-invoicing system’. What this means is that public sector bodies will stop receiving paper invoices and instead receive electronic invoices. It is also part of a wider movement to create fully digital public procurement processes by 2020.