This supplier was also maintaining the school’s heating system under a separate contract but providing a poor quality and expensive service. To make matters worse, when the school tried to get out of the contracts it had signed just after becoming grant maintained in 1992, the company demanded a year’s notice.

Eventually the company agreed to a shorter period of notice and Northwood was able to negotiate a one-year contract with a supplier offering gas at 28. 52p a therm. But before the ink was dry on this contract, yet another company offered the school a complete gas maintenance and supply package at a guaranteed price of Pounds 19,000 a year.

“When we broke that down, the price of the gas came out at about 31p per therm, which was more than our new supplier was going to charge us,” says Irene Stratton. “But when we added up the amount of money that we had paid on gas alone when we were with our original supplier, to say nothing of the maintenance costs, we reckoned that if we bought the complete maintenance and supply package we would save somewhere in the region of Pounds 9,000-Pounds 10,000 a year.”

The catch was that the company wanted Northwood School to sign a five-year contract immediately. But Irene Stratton, now wise to the ways of gas suppliers, managed to negotiate a one-year contract for maintenance only, on the understanding that if all went well, the finance committee of the governing body would probably go for the complete five-year package once the current gas supply contract runs out. This arrangement will not allow the school to benefit from any cuts in gas prices over the five-year period, but it will make budgeting easier as managers will know exactly how much they are going to spend on gas each year.

Irene Stratton is convinced that the effort the school has put into finding the right supplier has been worthwhile. “If you get it right, you should be able to heat a school efficiently and make sure that your funds are going where they should be, which is raising children’s achievements.”

Northwood School’s experience over the last three years shows that schools can find good deals in the new competitive market for gas - but only if they shop around and use their purchasing muscle to insist on what they want.

Since the gas market opened up for competition, first to industrial and commercial customers using more than 25,000 therms a year and then in 1992 to those using over 2,500 therms a year, around 60 companies have been scrambling for a share of the market. They include the gas subsidiaries that most of the major oil companies and electricity suppliers have set up, as well as a number of independent suppliers.

British Gas is obliged to publish its prices for the 2,500-25,000 therm market under Ofgas rules designed to break its monopoly. But with other suppliers free to negotiate prices with their customers, there are now wide variations in the price of gas. The cost of transporting the gas also affects price, and users in south Wales, for example, are likely to pay more than those nearer the North Sea gas fields.

Another factor influencing the cost of gas is price dumping, where suppliers who cannot find customers for all the gas they hold end up selling it at heavily discounted prices. Advising users to take advantage of these discounts, John Henderson, of the energy brokers Gasline, says: “If you were to buy on an annual basis, which is what we recommend to our clients, and you are prepared to shift supplier when the price dictates, then you can maintain a very low price, probably into the medium term.”

Gasline charges a fee of Pounds 80-Pounds 150 for researching the market and negotiating contracts for customers. Northwood School found both its current gas supplier and the company offering a five-year maintenance and supply contract through this broker. Other schools use energy consultants who take a cut of the savings they achieve for their customers. St Robert Bellarmine RC primary school in Bootle, for example, has a three-year contract with consultants McKinnon Clarke.

With only some of its buildings heated by gas, the school uses a modest 5,098 therms of gas a year and is unlikely to have found a very good deal on its own. But the energy consultants, who arranged to buy gas for a number of local schools from Amerada Hess Gas Ltd, were able to achieve savings of around Pounds 420 a year for St Robert Bellarmine - half of which they retain.

When the contract with McKinnon Clarke runs out at the end of 1995, the school will have the option of buying gas through its local authority, Sefton. This arrangement will allow the school to keep all the savings, though it will be paying slightly more for its gas than it is now.

Unlike GM schools, locally managed schools, whose boilers are often maintained by their local authorities, are not always free to buy the kind of fixed price maintenance and supply contract that Northwood School is now contemplating. But Stephen Clyne of EFM Ltd, a company specialising in school premises management, says that all schools need to join forces with others when they buy gas. They can do this either through a local authority or private sector bulk buying scheme or through one of the growing number of energy consultants or brokers now turning their attention to the schools market.

Mr Clyne also advises schools to take account of the time it takes to shop around and negotiate with suppliers. “But as long as they cost the time it takes as part of theequation, schools should give itago,” he says. “There is no need to pay the list price for anything. Everyone wants schools’ business. ”