Notorious academy trusts: SchoolsCompany debt likely to be written off

Janet Downs's picture
 1

The Department for Education has written off up to £5.7m owed by the notorious academy trust, SchoolsCompany, Schools Week reports.  £2.7m was written off when the trust’s three pupil referral units and one academy were rebrokered to other trusts, the paper writes.  But the DfE had to ‘say goodbye’ to the remaining £3m.  Read the full story here.

SchoolsCompany was bailed out with a £700k grant by the DfE in financial year 2016/17 to cover ‘liquidity issues’.  At the same time, the trust’s then CEO, Elias Achilleos, was paid between £105k to £110k plus pension contributions in the academic year which overlapped the financial year.

Last year, we reported how an un-named director had said pupils were not ‘our children’.  Each one was a ‘customer’.   A meeting of SchoolsCompany trustees in 2017 revealed one director queried why SchoolsCompany should take on primary schools as there was no profit in doing so.

Presumably SchoolsCompany thought there might be profit to be made from running an academy and three PRUs.

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Comments

Celia Blair's picture
Sat, 29/06/2019 - 13:22

FEAT Floreat CEO's excessive salary was excused by the DfE because they didn't count pension payments! Now she is virtually redundant since the "trust" is to be abosrbed into GLS MAT. https://www.tes.com/news/ex-ministers-academy-trust-give-its-schools.
"Money for old rope sounds" insulting but that expenditure could have gone for the benefit of children rather than this "surplus to requirements" CEO. "It should be noted that these returns do not currently include employer pension contributions. The Department is looking to have this information included in future returns, which may affect the trusts in scope for our challenge on high pay." (ESFA Education and Skills Funding Agency's response to my question.)


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