What services do new academies need to source?

The importance of considering all the extra responsibilities shouldered by academies shouldn’t be underestimated. Sarah Honeywell reports

According to the Department for Education (DfE), schools becoming academies need to consider how they will obtain services previously provided by the local authority (LA). These services include:

Services and costs provided to community schools using the LA’s school budget:
• special educational needs (SEN) support services;
• behaviour support services;
• 14-16 practical learning options;
• school meals and milk;
• assessment of free school meals (FSM) eligibility;
• repair and maintenance of kitchens;
• museum and library services;
• licences and subscriptions; and
• central staff costs (maternity, long-term sickness and trade union duties).

Services and costs provided to community schools funded from other LA sources:
• costs of a local authority's statutory/regulatory duties;
• asset management costs;
• school improvement services;
• monitoring national curriculum assessment;
• education welfare service;
• pupil support (eg clothing grants);
• music services;
• visual and performing arts services;
• outdoor education services; and
• certain redundancy and early retirement costs.

The DfE was asked whether academies are required to buy back any of the services listed above. A representative from the academies team explained that it is up to individual academies to decide whether to buy services back from the LA or to purchase them from elsewhere.

The DfE also said that an academy has total freedom over how it organises the delivery of its services. For example, it’s up to academies to decide how education welfare services are delivered. A school might choose to buy back the services of the LA’s education welfare officer, employ a dedicated person within the school to fulfil similar duties, or purchase different aspects of the service from a range of sources.

However, the LA will retain some funding for services that it has to provide by statute. These are:
• home to school transport (including SEN);
• education psychology, SEN statementing and assessment;
• monitoring of SEN provision, parent partnerships, etc;
• prosecution of parents for non-attendance;
• individually assigned SEN resources for pupils with rare conditions needing expensive tailored provision (this is usually a top-up to formula funding); and
• provision of pupil referral units or education otherwise for a pupil who is no longer registered at an academy.

Sarah Honeywell is senior researcher in school improvement at The Key, an independent service that supports more than 8,000 school leaders by providing researched answers to their questions on all aspects of school leadership and management: www.usethekey.org.uk.

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