The recently issued report on a capital project at a single academy trust school may well exemplify why the DfE is no longer seemingly in favour of such single academy arrangements Investigation report: Queen Elizabeth Grammar School Penrith – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) The report ended by stating that the Trust had ‘overclaimed by, and was paid, £1,502,393.40 (£269,193.56 + £1,204,779.04 + £28,420.80)’ for the various works.

It is clear that the work undertaken benefitted the school, but since there was a limited pot of funding for this type of capital work, other schools presumably will have missed out on access the funds that should have been returned to the DfE according to the report.  The school is now transferring from a single school trust to join a multi-academy trust in the same region.

A detailed analysis of the evidence in the report reveals that at least one trustee had concerns about the way the project was being handled, and that cash could be claimed back by the DfE.

In former times, would internal auditors at a local authority have been more diligent in preventing the transfer of funds from the specified project to other needs? What is clear is that because the school had been rated as ‘outstanding’ by ofsted in its previous form it had not had an inspection since becoming an academy. Might an inspection team have noticed if they had visited the school during the period of the project: who knows, but it would not have been the focus of attention.

This type of report is rare, but the school is not unique in being the subject of such a report. Doing the best for your school or schools is a long-established principle providing the scheme is undertaken within the rules.

I well recall a local authority in the 1960s where their building branch was very good at gaming the system. In those days, LA listed capital projects in order of priority and the Ministry specified which projects would be funded. This authority would often come back during the financial year to ask if there was any unspent capital as a project that was unfunded had moved up the order, normally because a developer had started to build a new estate faster than expected and places were now needed sooner than anticipated for the pupils living in the new houses.

Eventually, the government moved from selecting actual projects to providing a cash sum and letting local authorities decide their own priorities. The change placed the onus on the authority to decide the order of priority.

As there is never enough capital funding for schools – Ted Short and Mrs Thatcher when Labour and Conservative Education Ministers in the 1960s and 1970s both wanted to rebuild pre-1906 primary schools, but were frustrated by economic circumstances – and the present economic state of the nation is likely to once again to put capital funding under pressure, and highlight the need for a fair and just allocation system that all responsible for schools will adhere to operating properly.