Education

Our Education Team advises maintained and independent sector schools, academies, colleges and universities. The team is lead by Helen Tucker, former Head of Legal at The Girls' Day School Trust, a large group of schools and academies. Our team have significant experience of advising education providers across a range of issues, including education specific issues, academy conversions; collaborative working and a full range of other services such as employment and property, as set out in more detail below:

Education specific issues including:

Legal and Regulatory compliance;
Complex Child Protection and Safeguarding issues;
Disability Discrimination and SEN;
Parental Complaints and panel hearings;
Exclusions and appeals;
Pastoral issues, behaviour and bullying;
Parent Contract issues and amendments;
Litigation / threatened litigation;
Issues arising from unpaid fees / fees in lieu of notice;
Issues arising from the divorce/separation of parents;
Educational negligence; and
Immigration (under Tier 4, Points Based System).

We can also offer fixed rates for general legal advisory services to schools in relation to such issues, both to individual schools and to groups of schools.

Academy Conversions:
We offer schools a fixed fee rate to cover all legal work from the initial consultation and application to conversion and registration. We have significant experience of preparing Transfer Agreements, and arranging for the transfer of school staff, land, assets and contracts.

Having previous experience of providing legal advisory services to a group of schools, we are also able to offer legal advisory services to schools who no longer receive these from the Local Authority. Please contact Helen Tucker to discuss further.

Collaborative Working:
We can advise schools on structures for working together with other schools in partnerships, federataions, setting up companies, for example to achieve economies of scale, share best practice and resources.

Other related practice areas: