School Strike Threatened Over ‘Diversion’ of Funding
The University of Brighton Academies Trust (UBAT) has been accused of diverting excessive sums of money from two individual secondary schools which it governs, St Leonards Academy and the Hastings Academy, into its central funding pool. Local Conservative MP Sally-Ann Hart has made this complaint after publishing replies to her own Freedom of Information request. These reveal, she says, that UBAT took 25.9% (nearly £3 million) of the money allocated to St Leonards Academy and around 16.45% (around £1.1 million) from the Hastings Academy for the last academic year. She describes these figures as “shocking” and “staggering”. Other multi-academy trusts take on average between 5% and 8% of the annual funding grant for individual schools to pay for central services.
Hastings Academy
Mrs Hart has launched a petition to compel UBAT to “return the funds that rightfully belong in our schools” and to “transfer control of the schools to an academy trust that prioritises our children’s future…We need this money kept here in Hastings and St Leonards”.
In the meantime, staff at both schools have held an “indicative” ballot for strike action, according to their union, The National Education Union (NEU). The immediate cause is information which has been received by the union that the Hastings Academy is about to lose agency support staff. However, the NEU’s district secretary Jenny Sutton has associated this staff cut with the withholding of funds by UBAT. She says that the school has already removed student support managers, that teaching assistants are not being replaced, and that external mental health support is also potentially being lost. Each of these cuts significantly adds to teachers’ workloads as well as undermining children’s education in schools where attendance and achievement rates are already below national averages.
Further preliminary ballots for strike action are scheduled to be held at two Primary Academies run by UBAT in Hastings and St Leonards, The Baird and Robsack Wood.
A further school, Hollington Primary Academy, was removed ‘by agreement’ last year to a different trust, Pioneer, because the school was rated by Ofsted as ‘inadequate’.
Ms Sutton agrees with Mrs Hart that UBAT should be compelled to redirect to schools “the excessive amount of public funding they have withheld”. But she believes that all schools should be returned to the control of East Sussex County Council “where there is transparency and democratic accountability”, rather than to another academy trust.
For a fuller expression of Ms Sutton’s opinion, see Academy Gravy Train on page 9.
The parent of a current pupil at Hastings Academy said that she has received no information from UBAT about forthcoming staff changes. However, her son had reported to her that a teacher had told his class that staff numbers at the school were being reduced because it was “poor”.
UBAT was asked for its comments on the matters contained in this report but had not responded at the time of going to press.
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