Difficult economic market conditions have led trusts “to make some poorly informed decisions on cutbacks” to find savings on school estates, according to a Department for Education programme review.
Advisers sent out to help improve school estate management found trusts having to make cutbacks to free up funds for other areas of spending, says the DfE’s review, which was carried out as part of its capital advisers programme.
Financial difficulties also left some trusts without enough money to recruit suitable estates professionals, and with problems in securing qualified contractors.
Potential risks across school estates
“Market conditions, along with limited experience, have led trusts to make some poorly informed decisions on cutbacks to focus on savings,” the evaluation states. “This could potentially result in additional risks across the estate.”
Of the 64 trusts visited in the second part of the programme, 84 per cent said their estate management had been negatively affected by the financial landscape.
Capital advisers visited single-academy trusts (SATs) and multi-academy trusts with high-condition-need estates from January 2023. After a pilot scheme, part one of the programme took place from September 2022.
Advisers found that trusts “consistently ranked their own level of good estate management practices higher than what capital advisers found when visiting them”.
This evaluation has been published after the 2024 Academy Trust Handbook was updated to include failure to manage the school estate as a circumstance that could lead to a notice to improve.
The Association of School and College Leaders warned at the time that many school buildings were “not fit for purpose” and that budgets were too stretched to start large capital projects.
The new evaluation predicts that if trusts implement recommendations from advisers, this will save them £8.2 million across energy, project-delivery and maintenance costs.
Only around 40 per cent of the trusts visited were fully implementing the good estate management for schools (GEMS) guidance.
Smaller trusts’ struggles to afford specialists
SATs, smaller trusts and rural trusts struggled the most, according to the evaluation. It says smaller trusts often did not have enough money to employ a dedicated estates specialist and had to delegate this role to existing staff, even though this was not a usual part of their responsibilities.
Tes revealed earlier this year that the number of schools advertising for caretakers and cleaners had soared by 126 per cent compared with 2018-19.
Trusts in rural areas reported particular difficulty in finding contractors and staff. Their remote locations also meant it was harder for them to get the three quotations needed from contractors to satisfy value for money, and this lengthened the time to source materials and get started.
The evaluation comes after the reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC) crisis that forced many schools to shut parts of their buildings in 2022-23.
The Commons Public Accounts Committee (PAC) said in March that the DfE did not have a good enough understanding of the safety risks across school buildings to fully quantify and mitigate them.
Dame Meg Hillier, chair of the committee at the time, said this was the “consequence of a deficit of long-term infrastructure planning”.
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