Advice for schools and responsible bodies to help manage their school buildings and land.
Managing your school estate effectively will help you to save money and ensure you have a healthy, safe and sustainable school environment.
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Find out what policies and processes you should have in place by looking at the fundamentals of good estate management.
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Complete the organisational self-assessment tool to assess your organisation’s current approach to estate management.
Who should read this manual
You will find this manual useful if you have responsibility for overseeing or managing the estate. This includes:
- proprietors, leaders and governors of schools
- charity trustees of academies and academy trusts
- trustees of schools
- school business professionals
- those with responsibility for the day-to-day running of the school estate
- local authorities
- diocesan authorities and other religious authorities and bodies
- Good estate management for schools (GEMS) - what's new A summary of changes and updates to the previous version of GEMS.
- Fundamentals of good estate management An overview of the important policies, processes and documents schools should aim to have in place.
- Strategic estate management An overview of strategic estate management and the policies and governance arrangements you should have in place to help manage your estate effectively.
- Planning and organising your estate resources Advice on governance, budgeting, procurement and emergency planning procedures to help you manage your estate.
- Understanding and managing your land and buildings Advice on the information you should have about your estate, and how to use if effectively.
- Performance management and sustainability Understand how to use data to measure the performance of your estate, encourage sustainability and manage energy and water use.
- Maintaining your estate Advice on planning and prioritising maintenance works to ensure the learning environment is safe, warm and weatherproof.
- Health and safety Advice on legal responsibilities for managing and maintaining school buildings and land, and ensuring compliance with statutory and regulatory standards.
- Managing your estate projects Advice on planning, managing and delivering all sizes of estate projects.
- Tools and checklists Tools to help schools and responsible bodies manage their school buildings and land.
- Terminology Definitions of common terms used in this manual to reflect the differences between schools.