Pre-Opening Project Management

At PAG, we recognise that opening a free school is a challenging process that requires strong leadership, vision and determination and that not all great leaders will have sufficient time or internal resources to deliver a successful opening, without specialist support.
Project Management

Long term experience

Premier Advisory Group has worked with many single- and multi academy trusts to successfully write free school applications. In 2019 alone, we worked with over 30 proposers, on their free school applications in the Department for Education’s Wave 2 and 14 processes. Our team has significant experience of pre-opening project management and can help guide new academies throughout the rigorous pre-opening process.

benefits

There are myriad advantages to opening a free school, including enhancing collaboration, delivering economies of scale and financial stability, developing high-quality central services, having the opportunity to impact the school environment from the outset, creating fresh links with the community and improving the recruitment and retention of high-quality staff.

bespoke pre-opening project management

PAG offers a high-quality, personalised service to help with the volume and complexity of tasks in the pre-opening period. Our reliable team of professional, proactive and punctilious project managers have built a trusted relationship with the DfE, ensuring the success of the project and the timely opening of your new school. Our team will bring to the project skills and expertise including tracking progress towards key milestones, documentation control, and ensuring effective and efficient communications between key individuals and stakeholder groups.

How can we support you?

During the pre-opening phase, PAG can offer support with:

  • The site and buildings
  • Recruitment and engagement
  • Marketing
  • Governance and due diligence
  • Business planning and finances
  • MAT formation
  • Procurement
  • Policy writing
  • Statutory consultation

We will provide a combination of strategic advice, practical guidance and task delivery. In projects such as these, there are areas where there are no definitive right answers to an issue (although there are usually many wrong answers!). We will set out a range of solutions and their respective strengths and weaknesses so that your trust can make an informed decision.

Those who are interested in procuring our Pre-Opening Project Management Service will need to prepare an invitation to tender (ITT). This is in line with the Department for Education’s procurement guidance.

The tender document should specify what exactly you would require the Project Manager to do, as well as how you intend to appraise responses you will receive. Once this has been created, you may send it out to those offering the service, post it on your website and share with the local authority to post on your behalf.

If you require further information about the service we offer, please contact us.

Testimonials

Free school and fundings
“Since 2015, Premier Advisory has been an energetic, trustworthy and reliable partner across a range of strategic projects. They helped move PACT from primary into secondary education with a successful free school application and assisted us in a number of successful bids from capacity grants to school improvement bids. This has assisted the continued development of our trust. Through ongoing advice and guidance, PAG continues to help PACT deliver for the children in our care”

Prince Albert Community Trust

Premier Advisory
2020-03-23T16:40:02+00:00

Prince Albert Community Trust

Free school and fundings “Since 2015, Premier Advisory has been an energetic, trustworthy and reliable partner across a range of strategic projects. They helped move PACT from primary into secondary education with a successful free school application and assisted us in a number of successful bids from capacity grants to school improvement bids. This has assisted the continued development of our trust. Through ongoing advice and guidance, PAG continues to help PACT deliver for the children in our care”

Testimonials

“Premier Advisory’s services were recommended to us by a multi-academy trust for whom who they had worked with previously on a similar piece of work. From our initial discussions until the present day PAG staff have been a valuable source of information, expertise and support. PAG’s initial work was to work with the school on an application to open a new SEND school in RBKC via a local authority competition. This included a concurrent application to become an academy sponsor. Following the success of our free school application, PAG has worked with us on the formation of our new multi-academy trust which will include the new school and a local partner school. PAG has project managed the entire process, helping us to overcome a number of risks and challenges along the way.”

Freddie Adu, Queensmill School

Premier Advisory
2020-03-23T17:04:29+00:00

Freddie Adu, Queensmill School

“Premier Advisory’s services were recommended to us by a multi-academy trust for whom who they had worked with previously on a similar piece of work. From our initial discussions until the present day PAG staff have been a valuable source of information, expertise and support. PAG’s initial work was to work with the school on an application to open a new SEND school in RBKC via a local authority competition. This included a concurrent application to become an academy sponsor. Following the success of our free school application, PAG has worked with us on the formation of our new multi-academy trust which will include the new school and a local partner school. PAG has project managed the entire process, helping us to overcome a number of risks and challenges along the way.”
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