Is your school involved in a PFI project under Building Schools for the Future? MST’s education law expert Mark Blois offers a vital guide to governors’ legal responsibilities.
The scale of private finance initiatives in education is difficult to overstate. There are currently 845 schools involved in 107 PFI projects in England, and roughly half of the Government’s flagship Building Schools for the Future (BSF) scheme will be paid for using the scheme.
There are a number of different bodies involved in any BSF PFI project and most of them will require legal advice upon various aspects of the process. The importance of one such body, and the need for it to receive legal advice, is frequently overlooked. A school’s governing body plays a particularly important role in the BSF process and this means there are significant legal obligations upon it.
It is worth reminding ourselves about some of the legal responsibilities and obligations that rest upon the governing body. A range of duties and powers have been conferred on governing bodies by the various education acts down the years. Of these, the main duty is to take general responsibility for the conduct of the school with a view to educating pupils and promoting high standards of educational achievement.
In discharging this obligation governors are required to act at all times with honesty and integrity and must be ready to explain their actions and decisions to staff, pupils, parents and anyone with a legitimate interest in the school. Governing bodies are corporate bodies and have a legal identity separate from the individual governors.
Two things flow from this. Firstly, decisions that have been made properly will be binding on all the governors. Secondly, individual governors are generally protected from personal liability as a result of the governing body’s decisions and actions. Provided that they act honestly, reasonably and in good faith, any liability will fall on the governing body even if it has exceeded its powers.