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Education

Specialist legal and commercial advice to help your school or trust to thrive.

Advice and support you can rely on

Responding to ongoing changes in policy, regulation and law can be a significant challenge for leadership teams. We’re here to help by providing practical and commercial legal support, tailored to the unique needs of our education and charity clients. Our sector experts advise charities, social enterprises, schools, academy trusts, and further and higher education institutions; we will ensure you receive focused, context-specific and sound advice to determine the best approach for you.

Whatever your challenge, we can help

Our education and charities solicitors support hundreds of primary and secondary schools, academies and multi-academy trusts across the UK, as well as numerous charitable institutions.  You can turn to them for commercial advice on everything from regulatory issues to governance, corporate structures, property, employment and charity law. And with transparent pricing, you’ll know where you stand on costs.

Specialist advice when it matters most

As a senior leader, governor or charity trustee, it’s reassuring to know you have a team of legal experts on hand with a deep understanding of your sector context. We can advise you on an ad hoc basis, or create a package built around your needs. This could, for example, include our fixed-fee Just Teach service, which offers unlimited advice on HR and employment issues, preliminary advice on other legal matters, as well as health & safety compliance support.

Training that addresses your needs

You’re welcome to join us at our regular forums and seminars. They’ll help you keep up to date with legal changes that may affect you and enable you to meet other leaders in your field to share ideas. They focus on key concerns and provide clarity on matters such as the complexities of disciplinaries, redundancies and common HR issues. We also provide in-house training for your leadership teams on subjects such as governance and compliance, parental complaints, suspensions/exclusions and the SEN code of practice.

Find out more – Essential training for your school

What our clients say

“Customer service is genuinely outstanding, you always get an immediate answer which supports effective case management.” Tracy Nash Share MAT
“Depending on how risk averse you are, they recommend a course of action; they recommend via case history. I never go against their advice. I trust it implicitly.” Chambers and Partners
“Outstanding. We are extremely happy with the service. It offers good value for money, for an excellent service. The lawyers are courteous, very informative and knowledgeable about the education market.” Legal 500
“Their advice has been unfailingly accurate and commercially focused. Response times and customer service are excellent.” Legal 500
“Very personalised, supportive service. They know the law very thoroughly, preparation is always very thorough and advice is sound.” Legal 500

How we can support you

  • Academy conversions
  • Admissions and exclusions
  • Charity law
  • Commercial agreements
  • Contracts and procurement
  • Construction and development
  • Corporate governance and company secretarial
  • Data protection
  • Debt recovery
  • Employment Law and HR
  • Freedom of information requests
  • Funding agreements and financial issues
  • Land issues, shared use arrangements and transfers
  • Parental and other complaints
  • Privacy notices
  • Procurement
  • Project management
  • Rebrokering
  • Special educational needs
  • Social media
  • Subject access requests
  • TUPE
  • Training for governors and the senior leadership team

 

 

  • Academy conversion
  • Training for your school
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Just Teach

Fixed-fee advice whenever you need it

Just Teach is our retainer service for education, providing guidance, reassurance and commercial advice, without the fear of unexpected legal bills. As the challenges intensify in this sector, it provides the experienced, always-there support you need so you can focus on running your school or academy.

Expert help for any challenge

You can use your Just Teach retainer to help with HR issues, from performance management to communicating with unions, and for educational matters such as student exclusions. It can also cover commercial matters, including property issues, governance concerns, policy reviews and corporate frameworks.

Health and Safety advice

We understand that keeping on top of your various legal and regulatory commitments can be challenging for any organisation. Our partner, health and safety specialist Crysp, is able to offer a unique platform that takes the administrative and management burden of compliance away.

How compliant is your premises? Use our calculator to find out.

Our packages

Support to suit you

Having worked with hundreds of schools, we know each one is different. You may find you need full support across the board or advice in just one or two areas. We’ll work with you to understand your specific needs and shape our Just Teach support around them.

StandardStandard +Enhanced
Areas of support (email, teams, phone call)Employment advice:
– Guidance on changing terms and conditions of employment
– Disciplinary and/or performance issues
– Capability, grievance and whistleblowing procedures
– Redundancy, restructuring and appeals advice and review of related correspondence
– Reviewing and/or drafting letters to employees or unions
– Sickness absence issues
– TUPE (excluding corporate transaction)
– Supporting protected conversations and advice on exit strategy		Employment advice (as in Standard/Standard+) and General Legal advice:
– Health & safety*
– Acquisitions
– Disposals
– Contractual disputes
– Property disputes
– Commercial property
– Planning
– Environmental
– Data protection / freedom of information requests
– Intellectual property
– Admissions and exclusions
– Special educational needs and disability (SEND)
Advice time limitUp to 1 hour per issueUnlimitedUnlimited employment advice, 30 minutes for General Legal advice per issue
MeetingsXVirtual or at our offices for Employment adviceVirtual or at our offices for Employment advice
Employment contractsXAnnual review and advice where requestedAnnual review, drafting and amending where requested
Staff handbooks, policies and proceduresXAnnual review and advice where requestedAnnual review, drafting and amending where requested
Immigration advicexUp to 1 hour cumulative per monthUnlimited (excludes applications or certificates)
Service and consultancy agreementsXReview onlyReview, drafting and amending
Settlement agreementsXDrafting and negotiationDrafting and negotiation
Schofield Sweeney webinarsIncludedIncludedIncluded
Schofield Sweeney seminarsAs priced2 free places3 free places
TrainingX10% fee reduction for in-house training20% fee reduction for in-house training
Service GuaranteeX10% monthly reduction if not completely satisfied20% monthly reduction if not completely satisfied

If the plans above do not meet your organisation’s needs, we can create a bespoke package to offer complete reassurance.

* For an additional cost, we can provide health and safety support. A practical approach to dealing with all aspects of health and safety legislation, incidents, accidents and investigations. Talk to us about your requirements to find out more.

We’re here to help. For further details on our packages and our pricing, get in touch. 

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Academy conversion

Support from conversion to growth

Are you considering converting your school to an academy or joining a multi-academy trust? Perhaps your school has already converted, or you want to expand your multi-academy or umbrella trust. Whatever your situation, we’ll help you maximise the opportunities offered by academy status, including closer collaboration among schools.

We simplify the process

From start to finish, we make the academy conversion process easy to understand and implement, and you have the reassurance that every aspect is taken care of. From transferring land and buildings to funding, governance, changes in staffing structure and setting up your academy trust.

Ongoing advice for academies and trusts

Once the conversion is complete, we can provide ongoing support to help your school or trust make the most of its independent management. If growth is one of your goals, we’ll help you ensure successful expansion and consolidation. While our Just Teach fixed-fee service is an option offering unlimited advice on HR and employment issues and preliminary advice on other legal matters.

What areas do we cover?

  • Academy conversions
  • Academy governance
  • Restructuring
  • SEN assessment and statements
  • Parental and other complaints
  • Admission of pupils with special educational needs & associated funding issues
  • SEN, Admissions and Exclusions
  • Commercial agreements
  • EHC plans and transition
  • Funding agreements and financial issues for academies
  • Land, property and asset transfer
  • Rebrokering
  • Setting admission criteria & admission policies
  • Special educational needs
  • Reasonable adjustments
  • Freedom of Information requests
  • Employment law and HR support
  • Admissions and exclusions
  • Admission of excluded pupils
  • TUPE issues
  • Admission appeals
  • Corporate governance and company secretarial matters
  • Exclusions and exclusion appeals, including in relation to SEN and statemented pupils
  • In-year admissions
  • Pupil Behaviour Policies
  • School improvement SLAs
  • Social media, online safety and reputation management
  • The application of the Admissions Code and Appeal Admissions Code
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Training for your school

Protect your school and meet your regulatory responsibilities.

Our courses are delivered by experienced education solicitors, who will tailor an interactive session to meet your objectives, incorporating real-life examples.

Delegates are provided with all materials and a certificate of attendance. We can deliver the course at our offices, your school, or any other suitable venue.

Content will be determined after an initial call to discuss your requirements.

Whether you need an in-depth look at a challenging situation or need some practical insights to help relieve the day-to-day pressures, our training will provide you with all the support you need.

If you would like to speak to a member of the team about training for your school, email employment@schofieldsweeney.co.uk  or call 0800 368 9818.

Download the training brochure here

Training topics we can cover:

Governance

  • Understand the different structure types of an academy or multi-academy trust.
  • Be aware of the roles and responsibilities of the governing board, trustees, IT and senior leadership team.
  • Familiarise yourself with the articles of association, funding agreements, scheme of delegation and DfE governance of an exempt charity.

Parental complaints

  • We’ll take a look at the different relationships with parents and other school users.
  • Understand the process and your duty to handle complaints appropriately.

Suspensions and exclusions

  • DfE guidance, the role of the governing review panel and independent review panel explained.
  • Be confident in putting the correct procedures in place.

SEN code of practice

  • An overview of the SEN law and SEND code of practice.
  • Be clear on what the Local Authority’s and your school’s SEN duties and responsibilities are.
  • EHC plans – find out what your school can and can’t do.

Key contacts

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Simon Shepherd

Partner
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Annie Gray

Partner
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Tina Morris

Associate
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0300 124 0406
enquiries@schofieldsweeney.co.uk

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