Greater autonomy allows schools to buy services previously provided by the LEA. These services may be purchased as a single site contract or through a federation or collaboration of schools. The important element is to ensure that your organisation is getting best value. The issue with this is, again, the time factor. Where do you get the time to identify the school’s needs, investigate the provision available, write the specification and negotiate the contract? A cost effective approach to this is to use experts for various stages of this process.

I can advise on:

• Cleaning contracts (are current practises relevant?)
  
• Catering contracts – cashless systems
  
• Reviewing contracts and service level agreements
  
• Systems to monitor the effectiveness of the provision