Managing your School Estate
Capital advisers programme – Pilot Evaluation
A report evaluating the pilot programme to support trusts to strategically manage their estates and make the best use of their capital funding.
The Pilot, which ran from March to July 2021, gaged if, and in what circumstance, an assessment by capital advisers could help multi-academy trusts (MATs) manage their estates and make the most use of their school condition allocations (SCA). A sample of 20 trusts who receive SCA were selected, ensuring variety in geographical spread and trust sizes, to participate in the Capital Advisers Programme (CAP) pilot.
Responses at the end of the pilot were mostly positive with no negative feedback, with trusts indicating “it helped with estates strategy planning, providing assurance and was beneficial for new/growing trusts…”.
Subsequent to the success of the SRMA pilot, the focus of CAP has been on the support and capability building pillars of the SRMA programme. A wider rollout of the CAP programme, which promotes best practice in line with GEMS could be advantageous for trusts.
“CAP will be expanded in the 2022/23 academic year as the pilot demonstrated significant potential to support schools. The department is continually improving its offer to schools, including industry-leading practice and tools in GEMS. This will help schools achieve safe, well-maintained buildings, helping to support world-class teaching and learning.”
The full pilot evaluation report is now available of gov.uk website. Click here for quick access.
Local authority established MATs: Test and Learn Exercise in 2022-2023
The Department for Education is inviting local authorities (LAs) in England to register their interest in establishing a multi-academy trust (MAT) as part of a test and learn exercise.
This test and learn exercise will allow the DfE to work with a small number of LAs, to test the concept of an LA-established MAT. LAs interested in establishing MATs will need to follow the same process as any other proposal for a new MAT, however this exercise will allow the department to identify issues which may be unique to a LA-established MAT.
Thus far, LAs have not been permitted to establish MATs. The Schools White Paper, Opportunity for all: strong schools with great teachers for your child signaled that this will now change, in areas where too few strong trusts exist. A strong trust is able to get better outcomes for their pupils and are able to support teachers and schools where the challenges are the greatest.
The published document provides further details for LAs on:
- Setting up an LA-established MAT
- The DfE’s intention to commence with a test and learn exercise for 2022-2023
- How to submit a registration of Interest
The registration of interest will close on 31 July 2022.
The full document is available here.
At TSO we have a dedicated and knowledgeable team available to support LAs and MATs, for more information contact us today!
White Paper promoting ‘strong’ MAT mergers
