What does it take to write a successful school capital funding application? We found out by speaking to Clare Skinner, Business Manager at Kings Norton Girls’ School (KNGS), who secured £700k from the Condition Improvement Fund (CIF) for an urgent site rebuild.
Read on for Clare’s knowledge about:
- How to find out which funding streams are available to your school or trust
- Where to go for capital funding advice
- How to understand your school’s condition priorities
And much more!
Prefer to listen or watch the conversation? Click the button below for the on-demand webinar.
An impressive track record
KNGS is a single academy trust. Its varied estate is made up of buildings over 100 years old and some as newly opened as September this year. Clare has over 13 years’ experience as a Business Manager and has an impressive record of securing school capital funding. Over to one of our Senior Account Managers, Ben Tummons, to understand how!
What funding streams are available to schools?
Ben: “There’s so many different funding streams on offer to school. Where do you begin as a school leader?”
Clare: “We start with really careful budgeting on revenue and being really aware of the money coming in and funding streams coming through – I get the ESFA (Education and Skills Funding Update) weekly update. The main funding stream we look at is the CIF, which is available on an annual basis.
It feels as though there’s more of an opportunity around CIF thanks to the October 2024 Budget – it seems there’ll be an increase in what’s available for capital funding. Hopefully we’ll see that come through to make more projects realistic!”
Where to find school capital funding advice
B: “Who do you go to for advice on funding?
C: “I use my local network to understand what money is out there. I also work with a property consultant team – they help me build our CIF bids. Advice mainly comes from a variety of local, national, and specialist knowledge.”
How to work out condition priorities
B: “Are there any key school capital funding focusses? Where do they come from?”
C: “[To work this out], I always start with a school condition survey. Lots of schools will have a condition data collection done by the ESFA so the government know the general state of school estates. But we also get an independent condition survey to drill down into more detail and help produce a maintenance plan for the next five years.
“From this survey, and in line with the DfE’s ‘Good estate management for schools’ (GEMS) guidance, I build a strategic estates development plan. This lets me focus on which capital projects are upcoming, and how I should prioritise these over the next five to seven years. Once I’ve built these into my plan, I submit it to my trustees.
“I then work with our property consultants to decide which projects, from a capital point of view, are most likely to be successful at getting funding – and which the school will have to build up revenue to fund.”
What differentiates a ‘good’ bid from a ‘strong’ bid?
C: “My estates development plan is very much grounded in evidence, like the CDC and condition survey. It also includes things like fire risk assessments, legionella risk assessments, and anything relevant to compliance across the site. Our development strategy is so rooted in evidence that it can’t really be argued with.”
I feel really comfortable that I'm making well-informed decisions, and so do my trustees.
B: “It’s clear that the key, here, is evidence. KNGS has been using our school compliance manager, Every Compliance By IRIS, since April 2022 to support the production of evidence for school capital funding applications. Please can you explain how you use it, and how Every Compliance offers that ROI as to where the funding goes?”
C: “Once I’ve got my [estates] plan, I know what to focus on and I make sure the evidence is up to date in Every Compliance. I treat this as an activity to check all the risk assessments and relevant reports are as current as they should be.
“To get evidence [to support bid writing], all staff across the school site use the system to log and raise maintenance issues – for example, what’s broken, leaking, or falling apart!”
Putting Every Compliance into action across the entire KNGS estate
Clare went on to talk about the steps she took to encourage all KNGS’s staff to proactively use Every Compliance to report maintenance issues.
C: “When I know that we’ve got a five-year plan for (potential) capital funded projects that I need to submit the government, I make sure all staff are aware of the plans. So, when they tell me in the corridor that ‘by the way, the roof in room two is leaking’, I can say ‘please log that on Every Compliance’.
“Firstly, I can use this ticket to get the site team to do a temporary fix.
“Secondly, I can bank this evidence for a CIF submission.
“[For instance,] I download a log of issues relating to ‘roof’ in Every Compliance. I use this information with finance data to see how much that’s cost us to maintain it and make short-term fixes. If this mounts to a significant figure, then surely it would be a better use of money to do a permanent fix and replace the roof to stop disrupting lessons?”
I also use Every Compliance to note when I have to close classrooms [because of condition]. The DfE is very keen to see evidence of the impact these issues have on a school’s operations, in particular, the difference the capital funding would make.
And that’s just the half of it!
Read part 2 to hear more about school capital funding from Clare, and how:
- KNGS uses Every Compliance to produce evidence for funding bids
- To overcome barriers to changing the status-quo
- To write a strong bid
If you’ve liked what you’ve read so far, why not get in touch with our friendly team to learn how you can use our school compliance manager to support your future funding bids?
