Summary

This section identifies some of the various sources of funding schools can pool in order to support the creation and development of an Education Improvement Partnership.     

There are a number of possibilities for effective resourcing of EIPs which members will want to consider.

Where an EIP is commissioned to take on functions previously delivered by a local authority, that local authority will local authority will devolve appropriate funding to partnerships, to enable them to deliver those functions. This, too, would be set out in the joint agreement.

Schools already have significant control over the budgets and can choose to pool a certain amount of funding for shared functions. Collegiate partnerships in both London and Birmingham are committing 0.5% of each institution's budget to a dedicated partnership fund. Under the New Relationship with Schools, there will be greater opportunity for schools to address local priority challenges in this way.

EIPs could draw on coordinated use of specialist schools' community funding - around £40,000 for a typical school of 1000 pupils.

We will encourage and expect Leading or Training schools to be members of EIPs working with partners schools to tackle underperformance or using their second specialisms to drive improvement. Leading schools receive up to £60,000 per year and Training schools up to £55,000: this is funding which EIPs could draw on to support their activities.

School Sports Partnerships receive up to £270,000 per partnership to develop sports opportunities for children and young people. This funding is used to provide partnership co-ordinators in the form of a Partnership Development Manager, secondary school sports co-ordinators and primary link teachers. The time of these staff could be used to facilitate collaborative working on sports across all schools in an EIP.

Schools participating in Primary Strategy Learning Networks (PSLN) receive up to £19,000 to help them establish these networks. These networks could underpin the establishment of the EIP.

Shared governance structures, such as those adopted by Federations, can streamline financial decision- making across institutions.

Forming a Federation or a joint school company would further enable schools to pool funds.

Although there will be no new money explicitly earmarked for facilitating EIPs, in future schools will have a greater say over the allocation of the Single Standards Grant than over the existing Standards Fund.

In terms of capital funding, groups of schools can already pool part or all of their devolved formula capital for buildings or ICT infrastructure. If the partnership wished to develop new joint facilities, it  could work with its local authority to inform the local asset management plan. Depending on local priorities, these developments could then be prioritised for investment from the authority's capital resources or, in due  course, from its local plans under Building Schools for the Future.