School to 'Academy' redundancy

My wife has taught in the same High School for 27 years and she is 58 now. In September this year the school is being changed from Council run to a self governing academy with a new Headmistress and other Senior staff and some of the existing teaching/support staff. Many teachers will not have jobs and it has been clearly intimated, my wife is one of them, having only 1 year to serve. The present Head has now tried 3 times to get her to accept 'premature retirement', twice with a 'sweetener' and once with nothing offered extra. I am sure that eventually a reasonable severence package will come on the table but here is my question-
If she rejects all offers, the present school cannot make her redundant and therefore on 1st September is the earliest she can be made redundant by the new 'Academy', and then they must give her a terms notice as per her contract. Is this a correct assumption? Hopefully it would not come to this but I would like to know to be able to advise her correctly.
Thanks

Happy New Year Pete and thank you for your question.

Can you confirm that the terms and conditions that your wife's terms and conditions of work and continuity of employment will be preserved under the new management? I presume they would be.

Organisations should always attempt to avoid redundancies through ways including recruitment freezes and sometimes may offer early retirement to volunteers (subject to age discrimination issues of course).

Has the offer to take early has been official?

Organisations shouldn't make 'a person' redundant - it is the position/positions that be made redundant. I am a little concerned that it has been indicated that your wife will be made redundant because she has one year remaining in service, prior to any form of consultation. I imagine your wife's redundancy package would be fairly high, taking into account her length of service and age. Therefore, as you suspect, this is perhaps the reason they are keen for her to take early retirement.

Of course this could work the other way and the new management may avoid the redundancy and let her work till retirement to save costs.

Can you clarify what you mean by the following statement?

"the present school cannot make her redundant"?

Has this been stipulated to her?

I look forward to your reply.

I think you hit the nail on the head with saying they doing all possible to encourage her to leave, the cheapest option for them.
You are correct that it is the position that will be redundant, that has been made clear, so I doubt the opton to work the last 14 months to retirement would be an option offered. The new Head is ruthless and will have only the staff she wants, thats the impression thats going through the negotiations. No intimation has been made that it is my wifes age that is the reason, of course ;-)
It was just an intesting point I had wondered. It is not the present employer that wishes to make the position redundant, it is the 'new' employer, so I just wondered if it is only when the new employer takes over (1st September 2009) that a Compulsory redundancy would begin to take effect, with the 90 days notice then starting.
As I said, and I hope you are right with the hefty pay off!, that it should not come to that. But they seem ultra keen to encourage my wife to leave and this goes back to last May when she was offered premature retirement with a sweetener that went from £8k to £10k to £17k. This obviously didn't make up for some 2.5 years unemployment, and also the prnsion and lump sum were reduced, making it self funding!
Thanks
Pete

Thank you for your reply Peter.

I understand why your wife declined the offer of early retirement - it would be self-funding.

I wish you well and hope things turn out well for you both.