With tens of thousands of school buildings requiring upgrades and MAT budgets already stretched, the role of private finance in infrastructure renewal is again being discussed. This article explores what this means and how trusts can prepare.

Do not mention public-private partnerships (PPPs) to school leaders and expect enthusiasm.

The legacy of the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) has cast a long shadow over the question of how to build and maintain schools in England. High transaction costs, long and inflexible contracts, and unbalanced risk transfer left many local authorities and trusts paying too much for ageing buildings, while having little power to adapt them to modern educational delivery. 

Put briefly: some projects were designed with too much of an emphasis on initial approval and capital return, and not enough for educational delivery.

PFI was abolished in 2018 for new projects, although it’s only now that PFI contracts are beginning to expire. Expiry itself can be a costly and involved process, and one expects little appetite for PFI 2.0. 

The problems that PFI sought to address, however, remain. In 2023, the National Audit Office identified 24,000 school buildings as beyond their initial estimated design life, but multi-academy trust (MAT) budgets are stretched to their limits. 

Clearly, a new approach to channelling large-scale funding is required, and required quickly.

Looking overseas

In the eight years since PFI was axed, countries such as Canada, Australia and the United States have continued to deliver major infrastructure through reformed PPP models. 

Indeed, closer to home, Wales and Scotland have also moved ahead with their respective Mutual Investment Model and Non-Profit Distributing Model, securing growth-fuelling investment in schools and other public services. 

England, by contrast, has stood still. The cost of that inaction, the failure to raise a viable alternative that is palatable to the Treasury, is visible in crumbling RAAC-affected buildings and estates that constrain rather than enable learning.

So what’s new?

Policymakers are looking again at PPP. A joint report from the CBI and Browne Jacobson, Pipeline to Progress: Making UK Infrastructure Investable, published in May 2026, sets out a detailed framework for how a modern, reformed PPP programme could unlock institutional investment into social infrastructure, including schools, at scale, with much-needed agility and pace. 

The government's own 10-year infrastructure strategy and Green Book reforms signal genuine political intent, while incoming Prime Minister Andy Burnham has been a supporter of PPPs while in government and as Greater Manchester Mayor. 

For PPPs to support a step change in strategic infrastructure delivery, a shift in both culture and practice is needed. Recent moves to strengthen long-term policy stability and rebalance investment decision-making underline the direction of travel.

What does this mean for schools?

Education is a natural focus for public investment plans. Capital spending on school buildings is economically stimulative, while also addressing education and social mobility goals. Done effectively, it kills several birds with one stone.

Indeed, the Pipeline to Progress report is explicit that education must be a priority sector for a reformed PPP model. 

For schools, modern PPPs should aim beyond ‘build and maintain’, and explicitly support educational outcomes. Attendance, attainment and behavioural environment can all be influenced through buildings that are flexible, durable and designed for evolving pedagogy, including AI-enabled teaching and curriculum change, while recognising that future demographic changes may also require thought on future use of assets.

This is a significant conceptual shift. A reformed PPP model is not merely a construction vehicle, but a long-term partnership structured around the outcomes that trust leaders already measure every day.

Academy trusts should act now

Senior leaders should not wait for government to issue a prospectus. There are four strategic actions trusts can take immediately.

1. First, engage early.

The ability of contracting authorities to take advantage of Procurement Act 2023 flexibilities by early engagement with the market differs markedly from some of the highly structured procurement processes that added cost and time to earlier programmes. Trusts with significant estate needs should be building relationships with local authorities, combined authorities and potential development partners now, not after a procurement is launched.

2. Second, define outcomes before anyone else does.

PPPs should be chosen and structured only after the public sector has defined the outcomes it wants to prioritise – sustainability, regeneration, social value, productivity uplift – and only where risk transfer and lifecycle integration create net value without undermining essential policy levers. MATs are uniquely well-placed to articulate educational outcome metrics that should be hardwired into any future contract model.

3. Third, advocate for sector aggregation.

Aggregated or bundled assets, whether neighbourhood health centres, education clusters or community hubs, create the scale needed to attract institutional financing at lower cost of capital. This creates an opportunity for forward-thinking trusts to position themselves not merely as tenants of a building project, but as anchor institutions within broader place-making programmes, bringing skills, employment and civic value that strengthen the investment case.

Trusts should work collectively, through sector bodies, to present coherent, multi-site pipelines. A single school project is unlikely to attract institutional investment; a programme across a trust's estate, or across a region, could.

4. Fourth, insist on social value as substance, not decoration.

Social value must be reframed from 10% of a procurement score into fundable deliverables. These include proportional and simple KPI structures that can be specified, measured and verified over time, ensuring that where government wants outcomes such as educational attainment, employment stability, skills and social mobility, the contract structure can support them credibly.

Trusts should demand that any future PPP contract contains verified, independently audited commitments on the outcomes that matter to their communities.

Again: design for outcomes, not for initial approval.

The moment is now. 

Speaking in 2012, Margaret Hodge MP, then-Chair of the Committee of Public Accounts, said: “When a public authority chooses to fund a project using private finance, it must be able to demonstrate that this was the best way to deliver real value for money for the taxpayer, not just a way to keep the project off the balance sheet.”

It is important this lesson is learned.

The political moment is real. The capital is available. What is missing is a confident, organised education sector voice in the room where these frameworks are being designed. Now is the time for trust leaders to occupy that seat.