What happens if a school goes bust?
As with many public sector institutions, there are clear and rigorous procedures in place that spell out what will happen.
The DfE (rightly) puts in place lots of warning measures for schools in difficulty, and if a school or group of schools start to find themselves in real trouble, a lot of things kick into place.
They can mandate that schools have cost cutters come in; they can prescribe significant changes to operating models; and they can both demand that the school or school group takes an advance from the state, whilst placing (pretty onerous) conditions that are attached to repaying that advance.
And given that financial trouble often goes hand in hand with performance trouble, the government has pretty carte blanche to change leadership and management when a poor performance judgement is made.
And if none of that works, then ultimately the state absorbs the costs of failure – often to its considerable expense.
