Centralising a service, step 1: choose a service

Centralising services across your schools can help you save money and streamline essential services. Find out which types of services you can centralise and how to pick one to begin this process with.

Last reviewed on 23 December 2024
School types: AllSchool phases: AllRef: 43833
Contents
  1. What can we centralise?
  2. What are the benefits?
  3. How do we choose which service to centralise?
  4. Consider a hybrid approach
  5. Next steps

What can we centralise?

You can centralise any business functions or educational services. A central service is run by a central team and will deliver a standardised service (the same, or very similar) to all of your schools. So anything you can standardise across your trust can be centralised.

Commonly centralised services

  • Finance
  • HR services (such as payroll and policies)
  • IT
  • Procurement
  • Estates
  • Governance and compliance
  • Teacher and leadership recruitment and development
  • Staff training or CPD
  • School improvement
  • Special educational needs support services, education welfare officers or other family support

What shouldn't we centralise?

Your scheme of delegation states that all your schools should have a high level of autonomy over the service (more on this later) Each of your schools runs the service in a specific way to suit their specific site or pupils' needs (and these sites/needs are very different across your trust) Your schools' headteachers value having autonomy over the service and you think centralising it could risk