If you are part of a school group and considering acquiring or merging with a new school, we can support you with conducting due diligence to ensure that it is the right fit for your school group, including reviewing the title; commercial contracts; employment contracts; risk assessments; and conducting a health check of issues such as safeguarding.  On the other hand, if your school is considering merging with another school, we can guide you through the process and support you by conducting initial checks on a range of risk areas.  Our support will help ensure that your school’s merger or restructure is carefully planned and runs smoothly.  In the circumstances, where there is regrettably no option other than closure, our insolvency team can support your trustees to ensure that you act appropriately and adequately protect charitable assets.

On more day-to-day matters, we can guide schools through parent complaints, behaviour incidents and exclusion including on the grounds of unreasonable parent conduct.  We can support you with putting in place key pastoral policies that comply with legislation, DfE guidance and good practice.  We can pair the parent contract with a parent code of conduct to ensure that parents understand the expectations placed upon them, and steps that the school may choose to take in the event that parent behaviour breaches the code of conduct. With parents increasingly using social media to fuel complaints, these are essential tools to ensure that your school may take action to best protect your reputation.