Resources

The Design Team is the group of architects and specialists the ESFA (or the main contractor) may commission to design your school. This resource includes a number of aspects to consider which are provided as indicators of a high quality Design Team. These indicators may be used to query options presented (if any) and help you influence matters to ensure a quality choice is made.

Stakeholders in a school premise project are many and diverse. The parents of potential students and the students themselves are most critical and you must remain focussed on their recruitment and enrolment. They will be keenly interested in your new site and building, the progress you are making and the timings.

Having Heads of Terms (HOT) agreed for a specific site for your school is a critical milestone and an indication of confidence that a feasible site is available and being secured. This checklist illustrates what you need to be aware of when HOT are being signed and and when feasibility studies are being conducted. 

The purpose of this risk register is to capture and maintain information on the identified threats relating to a specific free school project. Each risk is allocated a unique identifier as well as details pertaining to the categorisation and description of each risk and its associated response. The tool should be considered as guidance only: every free school is different and your group have very different needs from the examples on which it is based. 

The site launch meeting is likely to be your first with your ESFA Project Director (and/or Manager, depending on the scale of your project) and sets the scene for the pre-opening process and the relationship you will have with them. Ensuring you are prepared for the role of ‘end user’ is important for achieving the best outcomes for your students and staff. This resource will help you fully prepare for the meeting and help you make a positive start to the process. 

This pre-opening preparation workbook is a hands-on guide to achieving the best possible outcome from your site and buildings programme. Although the process followed is similar, every school development project is different and you will navigate many twists and turns on the way to opening in your new, permanent school premises. An understanding of the road ahead, with knowledge of the key aspects, stakeholders, and points of influence, will help you bring your vision into being. 

Finding and securing a site for your school, as well as designing and constructing your school’s buildings, will mean working closely with agencies within the DfE, especially Free Schools Capital (FSC) and their property company, LocatED. The path to a well sited, fit for purpose and inspiring new school requires difficult decisions as well as risks, particularly regarding time and cost. Handling this requires active management and careful communication with your prospective parents and other stakeholders.

To achieve the best outcome requires attention to details foreign to normal day-to-day school management like property management, school design and operations. The FSC are the experts from a technical and financial point of view but they do not know your school, your priorities or your ethos. They base their decisions on generic building bulletins, health and safety documentation and legal and capital requirements. Your involvement is critical to achieving the best outcome for you.

This guide includes a glossary and is provided as part of NSN’s Foundation Advisory Service. It should be read in conjunction with NSN’s primer on Finding a Site: Introductory guidance . A more detailed guide including checklists and tools is available alongside specialist site related support under the NSN Site Advisory Service.

Opening your free school on time and within budget is a challenging task. Our experience of working with schools during the pre-opening phase has taught us that it is easy to underestimate the quantity and complexity of the work involved.

This document offers an overview of different documents and statutory guidance from a range of organisations which you may find helpful for various tasks during the pre-opening period.

Your group may benefit from the additional support available from NSN. To find out more about the Delivery Programme, please contact open@newschoolsnetwork.org 

In collaboration with NSN, the ESFA have developed the following resources to ensure that free school groups understand the meaning of Heads of Terms, a key pre-opening milestone; the timescales involved in securing a free school site; and how to interact with the different roles within the ESFA. Heads of Terms is a plain English definition of the document referred to as Heads of Terms in property transactions.

NSN has designed the Site Advisory Service to assist groups in navigating the very complex issues associated with translating an educational vision into a school building that meets the needs of pupils and staff. This service includes very detailed resources that complement and supplement the support provided by the DfE and ESFA.