When I took up my post as director of New Schools Network at the beginning of the year, I had a think about what else the charity should be doing to help free schools.
One obvious thing was to carry out some research into open schools so we could feed that back into the programme. But could we also be doing more to help the schools that have been approved to open but haven’t yet opened?
There are more than 300 schools in this position. They are already receiving a good deal of support from the Department of Education and the Education and Skills Funding Agency, but in some cases it’s not enough. Dozens of free schools are facing very complex challenges and they need as much help as they can get if they’re going to open on time.
For that reason, NSN has decided to launch a suite of services called the Delivery Programme for free schools in that critical phase known as “pre-opening” - approved, but not yet open. We currently provide free-school groups with intensive, one-on-one advice during the application stage, and our aim is to extend this proven model to schools once they have been approved to open.
‘Maximising schools’ chances of success’
In this way, we can help to make sure they are set up as quickly as possible and in a way that maximises their chances of success.
In addition to the free guidance we already offer schools in this pre-opening phase, we will be rolling out three paid-for packages today: a Site Advisory Service to help groups work with the different agencies involved in securing school sites; an Essentials Advisory Service focusing on the key things groups have to get right if they are going to open successful schools, such as governance, admissions, staffing, curriculum and financial planning; and a Project Management Service aimed at groups planning to outsource some or all of their project management.
More intensive support of the kind we’ll be offering is already available on the commercial market-and some of it is of a very high quality-but more capacity is needed to cope with the demand. We believe we can offer a comparable level of service charged out at competitive rates.
Selling our services, as opposed to giving them away, is a new departure for NSN and is bound to provoke some comment, particularly as we are part-funded by the DfE.
But this kind of bespoke advice for schools in pre-opening is not covered by our DfE grant, so we won’t be asking free schools to purchase something the taxpayer is already paying for. What’s more, it is not unusual for education charities to ask their clients to pay for more intensive support in a whole range of areas; for example, CPD. Indeed, more and more charities are diversifying their income streams in this way to improve the services they provide to their beneficiaries.
We hope our Delivery Programme is welcomed by the sector. NSN has been supporting free-school proposer groups since 2009 and has worked with more than 70 per cent of the schools now open. In that time, we have built up an unrivalled expertise about the set-up process, from submitting the application to the first Ofsted inspection. The new programme will enable us to share that experience with those groups that need it most and to provide valuable support and guidance to help proposers get their schools open on time and on budget. If you are interested in finding out more, please contact me on director@newschoolsnetwork.org
Toby Young is director of the New Schools Network. He tweets @toadmeister
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