academies: opportunities for the construction sector

http://www.building.co.uk/professional/legal/the-new-state-schools/5059797.article

Some points from a piece in building.co.uk by Peter Hill: senior associate in TPP Law’s property practice

3,000 academies and over 170 free schools are open as of September 2013. 130 further academies plus 250 or more free schools in pipeline. Free schools are set up from scratch, the start-up process can take up to 18 months.

Once approved by the Department for Education, it has the opportunity to identify its preferred site. Funding for acquisition alterations or works before opening via the Education Funding Agency (EFA).



Academies offer less construction opportunities, more maintenance of the premises.
Academies have only limited control over the maintenance spend through the allocation of devolved formula capital. This funding is intended to cover only priority building repairs and information and computing technology.

For 2013/14, devolved formula capital funding for both maintained schools and academies will be around £200m, only a small proportion of the total maintenance funding for the year of around £1.5bn.

Main decision still for capital maintenance still with EFA for all significant building element replacements such as roofs, boilers and windows - same for local authority maintained schools, academies and free schools.

 Mention of the James Review in 2011 being digested by DFE.

 Decisions by academies (including free schools) are taken by the board of governors, who are also company directors and charity trustees. These triple functions correspond to those of their counterparts in fee-paying independent schools.

The largest chains may have 40 or more academy schools. There are many small academy chains of two-to-five schools, but not all of these have ambitions for growth and some have chosen alternative forms of collaboration.

Any academy may collaborate with other academies either for educational objectives or to procure support services, such as facilities management. This may be a contractual arrangement (a collaboration agreement) or through a corporate vehicle (an umbrella academy trust). An umbrella trust will be registered as a separate company and is funded by each of the participating academies allocating a portion of their budget to it.