EXCLUSIVE: DfE won’t confirm when academy transfer costs will be published. Is this foot dragging?

Janet Downs's picture
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Moving an academy from one academy trust to another can costs taxpayers’ money.  These can range from £0 to over £6m in one extreme case.  My rough estimate was that the average academy transfer cost was £75k.  This was based on figures for 23 academies released by the Department for Education (DfE) and Freedom of Information requests to multi-academy trusts (MATs) involved in transfers of 74 academies.

The £75k figure did not include the extreme £6m because it would have distorted the average.  Nor did I include the costs of one ARK academy which ARK claimed was not a transfer but a new school established on the site of a closed academy.  This was despite the DfE claiming it was indeed a transfer.  And I was relying on what the MATs considered was rebrokerage (the process of moving an academy from one trust to another).   Doubts arise over whether start-up grants, if any, or a legal fee payment of £25k were included in rebrokerage figures.  My estimate, therefore, is not accurate and should be used with caution.

As the number of academies changing hands grows, and will continue to grow in the future, it is important taxpayers know how much these transfers cost.   This is especially true as the Education White Paper moves through Parliament.   This paves the way for the ultimate academy conversion of all schools in England despite the much-trumpeted U-turn.  As the number of academies grow, so will the number of transfers.

It’s essential, then, that the DfE publishes the figures.  It has said it intends to publish the data eventually.  However, it says ‘there is no current agreed publication date’.  In other words, the DfE has said it will publish the figures – but not quite yet.

This is unacceptable.  At the end of December 2015, after a battle lasting nearly a year, a Tribunal forced the DfE to publish the transfer costs of 23 academies which changed hands between September 2013 and October 2014.  The Tribunal said there was a public interest in disclosing academy transfer costs.   But the DfE is prevaricating on publishing the costs of 100+ other transfers. 

The new education secretary Justine Greening should authorise the publication of the data immediately.  She should also put in place a system whereby academy transfer costs are published regularly – perhaps on a quarterly basis.  Decisive action to speed up publication would go a long way to placate suspicions that the DfE is dragging its feet to avoid taxpayers knowing how much public money is sent to MATs taking over existing academies.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Comments

John Winstanley's picture
Thu, 21/07/2016 - 10:43

The DfE really should publish a regularly updated list of all academies that have rebrokered and how much it cost to rebroker.

It is bizarre that this is not in place.

As well as the points about money/transparency that Janet has rightly raised in the article how can anyone assess the performance of a MAT if we don't know how long academies have been associated to them for? The open academies spreadsheet says when an academy opened but not how long an academy has been associated to a sponsor nor is there an audit of when a sponsor looses an academy.


Janet Downs's picture
Fri, 22/07/2016 - 08:16

John - there's also the misleading implication given by Nick Gibb that all academies which changed hands were rebrokered because they were inadequate.  But this wasn't the case with many of them.  The six Prospects academies had to be rebrokered when Prospects wound up.  The transferred E-Act academies moved academy trusts after the EFA directed E-Act to lose some of its academies after E-Act was issued with a Financial Notice to Improve.  Barnfield Federation academies were transferred (on paper) to a renamed academy trust which had previously been a part of Barnfield Federation after Barnfield was ordered to break up following a Financial Notice to Improve.  One Lincolnshire academy, Charles Read, transferred to another MAT because the academy trust it was with (WGAT) wanted to close it.  Another Lincolnshire academy, Stamford Queen Eleanor, was transferred from CfBT to CMAT after a CMAT-supported bid for a free school was turned down.   CMAT took over Queen Eleanor to realise 'the free school vision'.    A small proportion were stand-alone academies which decided to join a MAT to take advantages of economies of scale.  This group is likely to grow as stand-alones are encouraged to join a wider group.   

Despite many of the transferred academies NOT being inadequate, Nick Gibb claims the transfers were evidence of the 'swift and decisive' action taken against failing academies.


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