Friday 18 December 2009

Working for the Local Authority - or not?

We have the chance to bid for a significant chunk of work (6 figures) being offered for tender by our LA. It's right up our street as it involves training an external workforce in much the same ways as we train our own staff. So far, so good.

But the topic rasies some interesting govrnance topics that I continue to explore.

The work is similar to but not delivered to school staff and so probably outside the scope of a School Company. We cannot sensibly enter a legal contract with the LA as we are formally part of the same legal entity and so will need to persuade them to handle it a different way.
How do we ringfence the risks associated with the contract so that it does not jeopardies school finances?
As the work is strongly related to what we do but not directed at school pupils, can we legally do the work as a school anyway?
What governance arrangements woudl need to be in place?

Lots of interesting questions - especially when you consider that the work could be considered as of our community cohesion or extended services offering.

Were we a 'private' school we would not even be havng to ask these questions. Perhaps there need to be better/easier arrangements to let community schools operate in the way we would like.

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