Education

Working to enhance your unique community – our experienced Education group provide a comprehensive service, tailored for the complexities of the education sector.

Overview

Our Education group acts for a wide range of clients from nurseries to universities and has a long established track record of providing advice to clients covering the full breadth of legal issues affecting educational establishments.

The members of this group are selected for having a genuine interest and specialist experience in the education sector, with many having acted as governors or having close personal ties within the sector. The group is comprised of lawyers from a number of our highly rated departments, with an impressive number of rankings within both the UK Legal 500 and Chambers UK Guide. Having this diversity is hugely beneficial to our clients as it means that we are able to offer an all-inclusive, comprehensive and consistent legal service without you having to leave the building.

Core to our practice is the development of strong, long-standing relationships with our clients and contacts, which ensures in-depth knowledge of the issues facing the sector. Every client is overseen by a dedicated Client Relationship Manager who is committed to getting to know you, your organisation’s culture and the way in which you like to work. Our pragmatic support for senior management teams, trustees, governors and principles helps them to focus upon what is important – achieving the best, safest environment in which their pupils can thrive. Education is at the heart of our society and fundamental to its future. Our adaptable, sagacious approach is aimed at helping our clients develop their community to its maximum potential and we feel privileged to play our part in contributing towards the education of tomorrow’s alumni.

Our group’s experience is wide-ranging and we are pleased to be seen as trusted advisers who our clients can reach out to with simple day-to-day enquiries as well as the more complex, involved matters that arise from time to time. Our knowledge of this sector means that, over the years, we have proven ourselves to be well equipped to provide our clients with informed, tailored advice for almost any situation that may arise.

Featured experience

Our team is adept at handling both matters within single specialist sectors and those that require the involvement of multiple departments within the firm.

The group has recently advised on the transfer of a long-standing academy client to a multi-academy trust. The complicated process included receiving consent from the local authority to assign the lease of the school grounds, varying and novating the funding agreement with the Department for Education’s consent and assigning a number of construction contracts from when the school was initially built. The corporate, employment, commercial contracts and commercial property teams were all engaged in bringing this to a successful conclusion for our clients.

We have also recently concluded our defence of a highly complex employment tribunal claim filed against a client as part of a larger group action against a local council concerning circa 180 claimants. This case covered two of the most technical aspects of employment law, namely the equal pay legislation and the TUPE regulations and received substantial media interest. The employment team worked tirelessly for our clients in this long-standing matter.