Former head of closed B’Ham academy banned from teaching for acting dishonestly

Janet Downs's picture
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Thomas Marshall, head of Baverstock Foundation School from September 2010 and then executive head of Baverstock Academy from 2013 until 2016, has been banned from teaching, TES reports.

The Teaching Regulation Agency made the ruling after finding Marshall had not declared a family connection with Stone Educational Consultants (SEC), a firm run ‘solely by his mother’.   There had been no proper procurement or service level agreements but SEC had received £94,680 from contracts with the school.

This ‘non-declaration’ pre-dated the school’s conversion to academy status and ran for three years from February 2012 to May 2015.

Marshall was also found guilty of not following correct recruitment procedures when employing three members of staff.  One of these was a family member and this was not declared.

The panel ruled that Marshall had acted dishonestly but had not gained financially.  It took mitigating circumstances into account and agreed the ban could be reviewed after two years.

LEAP Academy Trust, which ran Baverstock Academy, was served with a Financial Notice to Improve in 2015.   In 2016, LEAP announced it had asked the Department for Education to close the academy because a new sponsor had not been found.   Despite parental protests, Baverstock Academy closed in July 2017. 

Baverstock Academy bailed out before closing

The academy had been bailed out by the DfE before closing.  It is not known how much of this emergency funding, if any, has been repaid.  LEAP’s accounts for year ending 31 August 2018 are not with Companies House and the trust no longer appears to have a website where its accounts should have been published by now.  The accounts are, however, likely to be with the DfE: LEAP was not one of the trusts named as missing the December 2018 deadline.

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