The Diocese of Bristol must be one of the first multi-academy trusts (MATs) to have posted accounts for the financial year 2017-18 on the Company House web site. At least, it is the first one I have come across. These account cover the year from September 2017 to August 2018, and thus follow the academic year. This is unlike accounts for maintained schools that follow the financial year from April to March.

In the past, this dual system has caused trouble with the government’s auditors for civil servants at the DfE. But, hopefully, that is all in the past.

One interesting feature to note is the five per cent overhead charge levied on schools in this MAT. There are eleven schools in the MAT and the cost to them seemingly increased from £403,000 the previous year to £486,000 in 2017-18. This charge covered physical, human, financial and legal support as well as education support and the classic category of ‘other’. From this, the Diocesan Board of Finance received £150,000 in 2017-18.

Now five per cent seems like a reasonable amount and it will be interesting to compare it with amounts levied by other MATs and paid by standalone academies for these professional services. There is also the question of how maintained schools should access these services? If schools in MATs must contribute to a central services charge, should maintained schools be required to do the same or be allowed to shop around for the best deal?

The Bristol Diocese MAT is coy in its accounts about the senior staff structure, although it has to declare the salary of its highest paid staff. There doesn’t seem anything about the gender pap gap, but I may have missed that bit somewhere during a quick read.

During 2018 the Minister wrote to MATs about excessive pay for some Chief Officers and it will be interesting to read any comments about this from auditors as more accounts are published. Will we see any significant reductions in pay or just an acknowledgement of the government trying to interfere in the running of MATs.

When more accounts emerge it will also be possible to review the amounts schools spend on those areas not covered in the DfE comparisons on the school data and performance indicators published by the DfE.

One area of concern that the accounts do highlight is the Local Government Pension Scheme, since all non-teaching staff in schools are normally entered into these schemes that are run by individual local authorities. Like most pension schemes, these have been in deficit and MATs and standalone academies have had to increase payments into the scheme to help overcome these deficits. Should the DfE now create a national scheme for these workers as they are clearly no longer local government employees? There may be an interesting debate to be had about the pension arrangements for these staff.

Until all schools are once again on a common annual accounting period there will remain two distinct groups that are difficult to compare in terms of income and expenditure. Such duality of approach is not helpful.