Welcome to the February 2014 edition of the Stone King Education Bulletin. This monthly e-newsletter keeps you up to date with the latest news from the Education sector and helps you find out about upcoming workshops and seminars!

This edition focuses on:

• The Stone King Education Blog

• DfE Website

• The Ofsted Logo

• Further Changes to Maintained School Governance

• Take 100 lines, Jones Minor

• Brandjacking: Protecting Your Name and Brand from Abuse

• Academy Director Conflicts of Interests

• The Public Procurement Regime is Changing...

• Fair Deal 2014 and the Teachers Pension Scheme

• Executive Heads and Teachers Pension Scheme

• School Teachers’ Review Body's Report

The Stone King Education Blog Our monthly e-bulletin is now complemented by Stone King Education Blog where we

aim to publish articles of interest as and when they arise. We invite everyone to

subscribe to the blog at http://www.stoneking.co.uk/blogs/education-law-blog and

to add their comments about things that catch their eye. This bulletin will then gather

together the less ephemeral material and will continue to be available to those who

prefer not to join the blogging community.

DfE Website Further to our note in our previous bulletin about DfE’s migration of all its statutory

guidance and departmental advice to the GOV.UK website, DfE has now announced

that its current website will close on 31st March after which time everything will be on

the GOV.UK website. Just as a reminder, the link to guidance can be found here.

A useful feature of the new website is that frequently you can find the history of a

particular document so it is becoming easier to track changes that are made in

successive versions of guidance.

The Ofsted Logo A convertor academy client of ours, which was judged Outstanding prior to conversion,

tells us that in its academy guise Ofsted have demanded the removal of the Ofsted logo

from its website. The rationale for this is said to be that the right to use the logo cannot

be transferred from one organisation to another – technically a convertor academy is a

different legal entity from its predecessor school – and the logo cannot be used for a

provision that has not been judged Outstanding – the school has not been inspected

since conversion. It’s a surprising move and one that is potentially quite damaging to

the school given that unless special circumstances come to Ofsted’s notice – such as a

decline in results – the school would not expect to be inspected in the foreseeable

future and thus will have no opportunity of regaining its spurs. We would be interested

to know if any other convertor academy has had a similar experience.

Further Changes to Maintained School Governance DfE has launched a consultation on proposed changes to the way maintained school

governing bodies (or board which is the terminology that we should now become

accustomed to using) are constituted. Read more

Take 100 lines, Jones Minor If one was to believe the press publicity, the central element of Michael Gove’s speech

on 3rd February was to be the introduction of a sanction that most people will have

thought disappeared some considerable time ago, namely the imposition of lines, so

favoured in literary works such as the Greyfriars series – who now remembers Billy

Bunter? Read more

Brandjacking: Protecting Your Name and Brand from Abuse There are a number of reasons why a school should consider registering one or more

trade marks, whether it be to protect its name, logo or domain name. Let’s start with

the main one: brandjacking and one particular form of it, Twitter abuse. Read more

Academy Director Conflicts of Interests We have recently agreed with the Charity Commission and the Department for

Education (DfE) a significant change to the articles of an academy company that will

prevent potentially difficult situations arising over director conflicts of interest. Read

more

The Public Procurement Regime is Changing... The new Public Procurement Directive is likely to be adopted by the UK in June 2014.

These legal developments will have important implications for your school when it

purchases goods, services or works. Read more

Fair Deal 2014 and the Teachers Pension Scheme We are proving advice to a number of standalone academies and multi academy trusts

in relation to enabling teachers to continue tier membership of the Teachers Pension

Scheme in circumstances where their employment is transferred to a trading subsidiary

which is established (quite often on the direction of the DfE) to, for example, operate a

nursery or SEN services. Until now, this has been problematic. Read more

Executive Heads and Teachers Pension Scheme “Executive Head Teachers who occupy a mainly financial or administrative role would

not be eligible for membership of the TPS”, said the Teachers Pension Scheme (TPS)

in a statement released in January 2012. Read more

School Teachers’ Review Body's Report The School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB) reported to the Education Secretary,

Michael Gove, at the beginning of the year. The Education Secretary had asked the

STRB to look in particular at teachers' working time provisions and their professional

duties. The Government had suggested that these provisions were over-prescriptive

and limited the abilities of schools and teachers to meet the needs of their pupils. Read

more

Upcoming Events

18.03.14 - Employment Law Seminar in London - Employment Update

19.03.14 - We are running a whole day seminar devoted to the new Children and

Families Bill in the morning and SEN, Disability, Behaviour Policies, Exclusions and the

relationships between all of these in the afternoon. Delegates may choose to come for

the whole day or for either the morning or the afternoon session. Lunch will be provided

for all and across the lunch-time break members of the Stone King education team will

be running an open surgery to which all delegates are invited. Bring your burning

questions – especially if they do not relate to the topics of the day!

The seminar will be presented by Roger Inman, Michael Brotherton, Laura Berman and

Richard Gold and there will be ample opportunity for discussion.

To book please go to our website here or contact Holly Prichard by email

HollyPrichard@stoneking.co.uk or telephone 01225 324427.

01.04.14 - “Doing More With Less In Difficult Times”: What Schools Need to Know

15.05.14 - Information Management in Schools – Data Protection, Freedom of

Information and Pupil Records

Click here to see all our upcoming events

IN ASSOCIATION WITH FASNA/DFE:

04.03.14 - Prepare for Admission Appeals - Central London

27.03.14 - Effective Governance - Central London

This publication is for guidance only. The law and practice referred to has been paraphrased or précised

and should not be construed or relied upon as legal advice.

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© Stone King LLP 2014