Jurisdiction(s):
United Kingdom

Related legal acts

Key definition

School definition

What does School mean? In legal practice, “school” denotes an institution providing primary or secondary education to pupils, whether state-funded or independent, and includes special schools. The expression is used across education, public, employment, safeguarding and equality law in issues such as admissions, exclusions, SEND/ASN, governance, premises and duty of care. In England and Wales, statutory definitions are found chiefly in the Education Act 1996 and the Academies Act 2010, covering maintained schools (community, foundation, voluntary aided/controlled), academies and independent schools; pupil referral units, early years and further education institutions are distinct. In Scotland, the Education (Scotland) Act 1980 defines schools, including nursery, primary, secondary and...

Ownership by School Type, School Sites Act 1841 Reverter, and Community Use and Disposal of School Land and Premises (England and Wales)

Published by a LexisNexis Local Government expert

Practice notes

This Practice Note outlines that who owns School land and buildings is chiefly determined by the school’s category, and examines Ownership across community schools, voluntary schools, foundation schools, academies and free schools. It highlights renewed attention to the School Sites Act 1841 (SSA 1841), under which landowners were encouraged to gift plots for local schools on the understanding that, if a school later closed, the site would revert to the original donor. It also addresses provisions allowing schools to serve community uses such as elections.

Ownership of school land and premises

In broad terms, the ownership of school sites and playgrounds, school buildings and playing fields is largely dictated by the type of school.

Community schools

At ‘community’ schools, the land and premises are owned by the Local authority for the area in which the school sits (that is, the county council, borough council or unitary Authority). The same position applies to maintained nursery schools and community special schools. The local authority holds the legal freehold interest in the relevant land and premises...

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Christopher McFarland

Sinclairs Law

Christopher is a Director within the Education and Public Law departments at Sinclairslaw. Starting with the firm as a trainee in 2013, Christopher has risen internally through the ranks to lead the Education Team in our Cardiff Office. He is the firm Legal Aid Supervisor for Education.Professional Expertise:Christopher specialises in all areas of Education and Public law. He has extensive experience with Special Educational Needs (SEN), Additional Learning Needs (ALN), Discrimination and Higher Education cases. Christopher has significant experience in pursuing complex judicial review cases at the High Court and was recently a key member of the firm’s team which brought landmark success in the case of R (Gardner) v Secretary of State for Health and ors [2022] EWHC 967 (Admin).As the Legal Aid supervisor for Education, Christopher oversees all of the firm’s Legal Aid cases alongside a busy and diverse private...

Jill Morgan

Jill Morgan is a Chartered Legal Executive and the founder of Clear and Credible Ltd, a content writing and copywriting business, specialising in law, local government and social welfare. Jill has specialised in housing law for a number of years, particularly homelessness and possession proceedings. She has a keen interest in social welfare law and associated issues and has contributed to a number of published texts. Jill’s practice extends across all aspects of local government law, including governance, planning, licensing, environmental health, property, housing and commercial contract. In her role as Deputy Monitoring Officer, she was heavily involved in governance arrangements and standards matters. Jill managed the local authority’s licensing team for a number of years and has a wealth of experience in advising at committees, sub-committees and contested hearings. In addition to contributing to the legal practice notes below, Jill has prepared numerous court digests and...

Web page updated on 21/05/2026

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