I’ve separated the statutory obligations for education authorities into four categories:

Educational Provision; Administrative; Resource provision; Educational Improvement.

In the next series of posts I’ll consider some alternatives for the delivery of each of the categories and then discuss the merits of the existing arrangements and the possible alternatives.

Educational Provision: So how could an education authority fulfil its obligation to provide education in a different way, i.e. how could it ensure that there are sufficient school places for all children in East Lothian? (at this stage I won’t offer any value judgements about any of the alternatives) However, I’d welcome your comments.

Could the local authority sell off the school buildings to an organisation which would operate the schools? By operate I mean the buildings and staff are transferred to the company who would deliver the statutory obligations of the authority under contract.

Could the local authority retain ownership of the schools but commission someone else to operate schools, in much the same way that PPP is managed?

In such arrangements it would be the responsibility of the authority to negotiate the contract with the commissioned organisation and to put in place monitoring systems to ensure that service level agreements are achieved.