14. Jeremy Pilgrim, School Property Matters

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For this episode Tim Warneford is in Bedfordshire to speak to Jeremy Pilgrim from School Property Matters who are independent experts in pupil capacity and have worked with over 2500 schools so far.

 

On this episode we cover:

 

Working with over 2500+ schools

Staring with only LEAs then Academies then MATs

The government origins of MATs

Feeling academisation brought freedom and autonomy

Although some of this has been reined in with MATs

Pros and cons of MATs v LEAs

Whether MATs are getting the right side of support

Working out the pupil yield from new developments

The drivers for parents selecting schools

Early adopters to academies having done quite well

Are MATs getting the Section 106 funding they’re entitled to?

Assessing what schools need to expand

New buildings being attractive to parents

A haemorrhage of pupils when a school is seen as failing

Good schools also having to consider what expansion means

The academy better having improved in terms of expansion

A large percentage of trusts talking of expanding this year

Risk to this growth

Previous estimates of 1000 schools converting a year now reducing to 500-600

Schools now reluctant to convert

LEAs could convert their education departments into MATs

Disparate systems being hard to manage

Section 106 allocation; there is money available that hasn’t yet been invested in school stock

Brexit restricting labour pool

How to increase quality of homegrown talent for labour pool

Money needing to be poured into growing home grown talent

Capacity need to be at the forefront

Why would schools maintain buildings they don’t need?