How Data Intelligence Empowers UK Schools Amidst Budget & Wellbeing Challenges
The BESA Compass Report – Summer Term 2025 paints a stark picture of the UK education sector, where schools across the nation are grappling with immense and multifaceted pressures, from deepening financial distress and unprecedented budget deficits to intensifying student needs (including a sharp rise in SEND concerns ) and persistent staffing challenges. This comprehensive report, based on candid insights from school leaders across the United Kingdom, serves as a crucial wake-up call for the entire system. Yet, amidst these significant challenges, data intelligence emerges as the essential compass for school leaders and Multi-Academy Trusts to navigate the storm and drive sustainable school improvement.
At Deesha, we understand these intricate challenges because our AI-enabled data analytics platform is purpose-built to transform fragmented information into clear, actionable insights. We empower UK schools and Multi-Academy Trusts not just to survive, but to thrive strategically.
Student Needs Intensify
The Challenge: Student challenges are intensifying across the board. The report reveals a sharp rise in concerns around SEND, with over 60% of schools facing serious challenges in this area. Behaviour (51%), well-being (50%), and attendance (43%) are also critical issues. Academic achievement is under pressure, with 27% of schools citing it as a "quite serious" problem. Unequal access to technology further disrupts learning outcomes.
Deesha's Solution: Data-Driven Strategies for Pupil Outcomes & SEND Inclusion
Deesha’s Student Information, Learning, Health & Safety, and Surveys analytics empower schools with a holistic view of each student, enabling targeted support and fostering inclusion.
Early Identification: Deesha automatically correlates attainment, attendance, behaviour, and well-being data to flag at-risk students earlier, ensuring timely interventions for improved pupil learning outcomes.
SEND Inclusion: Our platform enables granular disaggregation of data, allowing precise monitoring of SEND pupil progress and needs. We help track the impact of interventions, ensuring resources are effectively targeted to foster a truly inclusive learning environment.
Understanding Engagement: Leveraging sentiment analysis on survey data provides deeper insights into student well-being and helps uncover underlying causes of disengagement, beyond simple attendance figures.
Source: Pearson School Report 2025
2. The Budget Squeeze
The Challenge: The report highlights the increasingly precarious state of school budgets in 2025. A staggering 77% of schools report their budgets are worse than last year. Over 42% anticipate running a deficit, with primary schools being the most financially fragile (nearly 38% expect deficits). Local authority-maintained schools are particularly vulnerable, with 87% expecting to overspend. This financial strain forces cutbacks in vital areas like staffing, ICT, and teaching resources.
Deesha's Solution: Optimising Resource Allocation with Financial Insights
Deesha’s Finance analytics provide real-time visibility into your school’s financial health, transforming budget management from a reactive struggle to a proactive strategy. By integrating data from your financial software, Deesha helps you:
Track expenditure per pupil and analyse staffing costs to identify areas of overspend.
Model potential impacts of spending decisions, ensuring vital funds directly support teaching and learning, even when budgets are squeezed.
Identify opportunities for efficiency, helping schools avoid reliance on unsustainable reserves and prevent a deeper deficit.
Ready to Transform Your School’s Approach?
The BESA Compass Report 2025 is a powerful call to action for every school leader. It confirms that the future of education is personalised, data-informed, and skills-focused. But turning these principles into practice requires more than good intentions; it requires a robust, integrated platform. Deesha is purpose-built to help you navigate this evolving landscape. We don't just provide software; we're offering a partnership to empower you with the tools to predict challenges and implement early interventions before issues escalate. Our comprehensive platform is designed to help you personalise learning at scale and prepare students with the essential digital and real-world skills needed for a truly AI-driven world. Deesha helps you make smarter, more confident decisions that drive genuine student progress and enhance overall school effectiveness by converting disjointed data into concise, actionable insights. It's about moving from reactive problem-solving to proactive, strategic educational leadership.
Ready to harness the power of your school's data and build a truly future-ready learning environment?
3. Easing the Pressure: Staffing & Workload Challenges
The Challenge: Staffing challenges remain a significant concern. Recruitment of teaching staff is still a major problem for 37% of schools , while retention issues persist for non-teaching staff (41% experiencing serious difficulties). Compounding this, teacher workload is a constant stressor, impacting the time available for personalised instruction. Many schools lack a long-term digital infrastructure strategy, with only 16% having one in place.
Deesha's Solution: Automating HR & Streamlining Operations
Deesha’s HR analytics directly address the administrative burden and staffing pressures highlighted in the report.
Reduce Workload: We automate complex data analysis and report generation, including automated teacher-parent reports, significantly reducing administrative workload.
Optimise Staffing: Deesha provides insights into staff absence reasons, vacancy tracking, and retention rates, helping leaders understand workload distribution and strategically allocate resources.
Improve Efficiency: By centralising disparate HR and operational data, Deesha streamlines processes, ensuring staff focus on impactful tasks rather than manual data collation. Our Functional Evaluation module also helps assess operational maturity and identify areas for improvement.
Don't Let Data Overwhelm You!
The sheer volume of data in today’s schools can be a major source of stress, leading to a culture of overwhelm rather than empowerment. But imagine a different scenario, where every piece of data you collect becomes a clear, understandable signal guiding you towards a better outcome. Our mission is to make that a reality. Deesha's platform provides the clarity and control you need, unifying disparate data sources and presenting them through an intuitive interface with AI Narratives that explain the complex story behind the numbers. This allows every educator to become a data-literate practitioner, confident in their decisions and able to focus their energy where it matters most: with their students. By embracing a modern, AI-powered analytics platform, your school can transform from being data-rich but insight-poor to becoming a truly data-driven institution, ready to meet the diverse needs of your stakeholders and exceed expectations.
Want to dive deeper into how our platform delivers these holistic insights?
4. Enhancing Learning Resources: ICT & Curriculum Delivery
The Challenge: Budget constraints are forcing cutbacks in vital educational tools. At least 50% of schools plan to reduce spending in every major teaching resource category , with significant reductions in English, Maths, and Assessment Resources. Access to modern ICT equipment remains a major issue, with over 80% of primary schools under-resourced in this area. Curriculum delivery challenges are widespread, especially in Modern Foreign Languages (49% difficulties).
Deesha's Solution: Data-Informed Resource Management & Curriculum Adaptation
Deesha empowers schools to make the most of limited resources and adapt curricula effectively.
Data-Driven Resource Allocation: By integrating data from Finance and Learning modules, Deesha helps schools identify where current teaching resources are most effective and where investment is most needed, ensuring optimal impact even with budget constraints.
Curriculum Insights: Deesha provides analytics on student performance across curriculum areas like English, Maths, and MFL, helping to pinpoint struggling subjects and inform curriculum development.
Monitoring ICT Impact: By tracking student engagement with technology (via the Learning analytics) and correlating it with attainment, Deesha can demonstrate the impact of existing ICT resources, informing future investment strategies.
Empowering Education Through Actionable Data
The future of education is here, and it's defined by personalised learning, data-informed strategies, and a relentless focus on future-ready skills. For every school leader, multi-academy trust (MAT), and educator, this report serves as a powerful call to action to move beyond traditional methods and embrace the transformative potential of educational data.
At Deesha, we're not just providing software; we're offering a partnership to navigate this evolving landscape. Our comprehensive platform is purpose-built to help you:
Predict challenges and implement early interventions before issues escalate.
Personalise learning at scale, ensuring every student receives tailored support.
Prepare students with the essential digital and real-world skills.
Unify fragmented data into clear, actionable insights.
Deesha empowers you to make smarter, more confident decisions that drive genuine student progress and enhance overall school effectiveness. It’s about moving from reactive problem-solving to proactive, strategic educational leadership.
Ready to harness the power of your school's data and build a truly future-ready learning environment?
Deesha is a proud member of the British Educational Suppliers Association (BESA). This affiliation is a mark of our commitment to quality, integrity, and innovation within the UK education sector. By being part of BESA, we align ourselves with a community dedicated to excellence, ensuring our solutions are always at the forefront of what schools need to drive positive change and achieve outstanding outcomes for every student.