Academy Gravy-Train
JENNY SUTTON of the National Education Union says it is unconscionable for Academy Trusts to denude school budgets by creaming off excessive funds for ‘central services’, and that all Academies should be returned to local authority control
A Freedom of Information request released by Hastings MP Sally-Ann Hart revealed that, whilst other Academy Trusts take between 5% and 8% of the annual funding grant for schools to pay for central services, the University of Brighton Academies Trust (UBAT) takes 25.9% (nearly £3 million) of the money allocated to The St Leonards Academy and around 16.45% (around £1.1 million) from The Hastings Academy.
UBAT, which controls 14 schools – eight of which are in Hastings – contests these figures. They may not give the whole picture, but preliminary analysis from the NEU suggests that about 13% of funds allocated to their schools are retained by the Trust.
As a result of inadequate funding, The Hastings Academy is facing the loss of all agency supply staff and the potential loss of external mental health support and counselling services for children. Teaching assistants are not being replaced and the school has already removed student support managers, significantly adding to teachers’ workload. Robsack Wood Primary Academy and The Baird Primary Academy are facing the loss of teaching and support staff. Staff are fighting back: preliminary ballots for strike action have already taken place at The Hastings Academy and St Leonards Academy and are scheduled at The Baird and Robsack Wood Primary Academies.
Hastings District NEU wrote to Dr John Smith, the CEO of UBAT, asking for confirmation of the FOI figures and for the Trust’s own figures. Instead of concrete information, we got dissemblance and obfuscation. This highlights a central problem with the Academies programme, which was set up by the Blair government in 2000 and significantly expanded by the Tories after 2010: Academy Trusts operate with little financial transparency and no democratic control. Highly paid executives proliferate as schools operate on shoe-string budgets. Aspirations Academies Trust, for example, has defended the decision to provide six of its central team staff with £40,000 Tesla company cars at a cost of £90,000 over three years for the leased vehicles.
Our schools are already in crisis with decrepit and often dangerous buildings, large class sizes and too few staff. UBAT schools serve deprived communities with a high proportion of disadvantaged students and SEND needs. Attendance and achievement rates are already below national average. Further cuts will undermine any progress that has been made for local children and will inevitably lead to a deterioration in behaviour, lower attendance and poorer outcomes for our pupils.
Sally-Ann Hart MP wants our schools to be transferred to another academy trust – apparently she has social connections with Ark Academy Trust whose co-founder, Tory party donor Sir Paul Marshall, was forced to resign as Trustee of Ark Schools following revelations that he had liked and retweeted comments of a homophobic, Islamophobic, discriminatory and extremist nature. As far as the NEU is concerned, moving to another trust is not a satisfactory solution.
Ultimately, we want schools returned to Local Education Authority control, where there is transparency and democratic accountability. In the short term, we want UBAT to redirect to schools the excessive amount of public funding they have withheld.
It already feels as if schools are at the frontline of a social crisis caused by 14 years of austerity. Teachers and support staff are run ragged supporting unprecedented numbers of children in mental health distress and increasing poverty. One in three teachers are leaving the profession within five years due to stress, workload and inadequate pay. We have the largest class sizes in Europe and some of the poorest educational outcomes. The knowledge that fat cats in UBAT are creaming-off funds intended for some of our poorest communities is enraging to our members. We will not hesitate to take whatever action is necessary to ensure that our interests, and the interests of the communities we serve, are protected.
Jenny Sutton is Hastings District Secretary of the NEU, the National Education Union.
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