The resignation of a Cambridgeshire headteacher following a dispute about the amount of money spent on overheads by the trust that runs his secondary school has placed in the public domain a source of tension more frequently discussed behind closed doors. Top-slicing of school budgets by multi-academy trusts is the way this governance model works. The trusts pool money taken from school budgets to fund themselves and the services they provide. These include IT, premises management and, increasingly, centralised curriculum development.
With school budgets under intense pressure, and nearly half of multi-academy trusts in England in deficit because their income has not risen in line with costs, it is not surprising that negotiations are causing friction. Last year, plans by the multi-academy trust Reach2 to pool funding and reserves were referred to mediation after unions representing teachers and other staff objected.
Mark Patterson said he was leaving Hinchingbrooke school because of “significant concerns” about Aces Academies Trust’s management. The amount taken from his school rose to £770,000 in 2021-22 from £383,206 the year before. The trust has rejected what it called “serious accusations” and said expansion plans lay behind the dispute. The 4% of Hinchingbrooke’s budget allocated to Aces is a smaller proportion than that top-sliced by other smaller trusts; research shows that 7.4% is typical.
It is not difficult to see why the ambitions of a trust and a school might conflict. But by giving up on efforts to make the academy governance model work better overall, ministers have let schools down. Trusts have not lived up to expectations. While some of their schools are very successful, they are overrepresented at the bottom as well as the top of league tables. That’s why the government’s 2022 white paper promised to let councils set up their own trusts, and proposed a new minimum of 10 schools. Had a bill made it to the Commons, Labour would have tried to amend it to give councils more power over admissions.
