Tag Archives: Academy Trsuts

Can we make savings in our school system?

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We all know that government finances are tight, and with both defence and the NHS on the lookout for more cash to spend, the Labour government has a challenging time ahead if it doesn’t want to raise taxes. Welfare reform is a big issue, but the increase in the number of pensioners, and especially older pensioners, together with an increasing number of young NEETs provides a real challenge for any government when allocating priorities for the taxes it can raise.

Before looking at three possible areas for savings in the school system, here is a suggestion for attacking the NEET problem. Every school should offer one apprenticeship for every 25 pupils. Smaller schools should be encouraged, but not required to take on at last one apprentice.

This scheme might create perhaps 20,000 new jobs that offered real work to those currently unemployed. I would have paid for the scheme both by unused Apprenticeship Ley cash returned to the Treasury, and by using the dormant assets funds for this much more defined scheme than for the recently announced ‘Every Child Can’ programme that seems a good intention but won’t necessarily reduce the number of NEETs.

Now for my ideas about efficiency savings. There are three areas where I think a national strategy could reap dividends:

Small Sixth Forms

Small Schools

MATs numbers and costs

Earlier this year, I wrote a post on this blog about small sixth forms, and their results. This was based upon an analysis of ‘A’ Level results for one year in one local authority area, where all secondary schools are academies. Are small sixth forms a good idea? | John Howson

Wit the prospect of a period of falling rolls, a national strategy for post-16 education might be unpopular with schools and teachers, but might pay dividends in reducing expenditure in this sector.

Falling school rolls also offers the opportunity to take another look at small schools.  I know that overheads have been brought down by creating executive heads for several schools, and allowing primary schools to open nursery classes, but could a strategic look at the school estate provide significant savings? Of course, such an approach would bring the government into direct conflict with both the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church.

The third saving would be achieved by doing away with the dual system of local authority and academy schools, and returning to a single system of governance for schooling. I would prefer a school system with local democracy at its heart, but even an NHS style MAT managed system ought to capable of saving lots of cash compared with the present shambles.

I looked up a series of MAT accounts for 2024-25 in one authority area and estimated spending of nearly £28 million on a range of services.

000s of £sSpend
2158LEGAL
446ACCOUNTANCY
64PROF FEES
1569INSURANCE
1021GOVERNANCE
2211RAISING FUNDS
5196OTHER SUPPORT COSTS
14241OTHER COSTS
932EDUCATION CONSULTANCY

As the DfE already has the data, they will know how much could be saved just on governance if there were no more than five MATs in each local authority, and legal and accountancy services were purchased from the public sector. Completely rationalising the governance of the school sector should save a nit insignificant amount of cash.

Sadly, I think there is little chance of any significant savings under the present government.

Fine the accountants

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Both stand-alone academies and Multi Academy Trusts use private sector accountants to audit their accounts.  Each year, a number of MATs and academies are tardy in publishing their accounts at Companies House, where anyone can view the school or MATs handling of public money.

In my experience, it is the same MATs and schools that keep everyone waiting each year and this delay prevents any useful analysis of how schools are using their funds in particular geographical areas.

As usual, I am still waiting to see the accounts for seven sets of accounts for the schools in the geographical area where I track all non-community schools. These missing accounts are mostly the accounts from the same set of schools that were slow in appearing last year and the year before.

I think it is high time that the DfE, now responsibly directly for the funding of academies after the closure of the EFSA, takes some action to ensure all accounts, save those where there are legitimate queries, are posted by the end of January each year. That’s five months after the end of the accounting year, and should provide sufficient time for all accounts to be prepared.

How to deal with those accountants that don’t file by the required date: fine them. The notion of fining for late delivery of documents is well known and accepted. After all, HMRC will happily fine anyone not delivering their tax return by the due date, so why not fine private sector accountants for not filing these accounts on time.

The consequences would be that either the fine was passed on to the school or MAT or the accountants declined to continue handling the accounts in future years. Either way, the fine should help to instal financial discipline in those schools in the non-community part of the state school sector that are either being ignoring or possibly even flaunted the deadlines at present.

With the recent White Paper once again raising the spectre of all schools becoming academies – one wonders how foundation Schools view that prospect – installing financial discipline from day one should be something the National Audit Office needs to confirm with the DfE is not just a nice thing to have, but a necessity. The NAO might well decide to qualify the DfE’s accounts if it cannot see the accounts for all directly funded state schools within the prescribed time frame.

In my next post, I will consider how salaries for the top earners in MATs within one area have changed between the 2024 and 2025 accounts. With secondary schools now regularly advertising their headship with a starting salary of more than £100,000, and some on even more than £150,000, it is important to know whether Chief Executives of MATs, and executive headteachers are now regularly earning more than the Directors’ of Children’s Service in local authorities.

I guess that they are also earning more than the civil servants that have the ultimate power over the school sector. One wonders what should be the multiple between the salary of the lowest full-time worker in a school and the headteacher? In many case, it cases the multiple is now more than a factor of ten, between the lowest and highest paid staff members in a school: is this too great a gap?

The Spending Review and savings

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Next week will set the direction for government spending over the rest of this parliament. Although education is a ‘protected’ department that may not mean as much now as it did last year at the time of the general election.

Changes in the geopolitical situation, and an economy where the green shoots are barely peeking through the surface, and could be killed off by the equivalent of one night of freezing temperatures doesn’t bode well for the education sector. This is especially the case when set against falling school rolls and the crisis in the higher education sector. The skills sector might be the one bright spot, and it wouldn’t surprise me if that is where most of the investment will be directed.

The present government is lucky in that the weakening job market means recruiting new teachers will be easier, and the pressure for pay rises might also abate if the choice is more pay for some and redundancies for others. Unions would, in my view, be wise to tackle conditions of service rather than majoring on pay rises and the risk of confrontation with a government that has been generous so far, but might not want to see the limits of that generosity tested.

So, might there be saving to be made?

If there are school closures, will this allow the most expensive and inefficient buildings to be removed from the estate. Why spend time taking out asbestos, if you can just close the school? How would such a policy be managed? Frankly, I have no idea, but to let market forces prevail might have an unnecessary cost attached. So parental choice or rational use of buildings?

And then there is the muddle of academies and the maintained sector.

I looked at the accounts for the period up to August last summer for the 30 single academies and Multi Academy Trusts with schools in one local authority area. The total pay bill for their single highest paid employee came to around £4 million pounds. Now, take out of that total the Trusts where the headteacher is the single highest paid employee, and the total might be around £2 million. Cut this to just five trusts: one each for the two main Christian Churches (CofE and RC) and one each for other primary, secondary and special schools and what might be the savings?

Then there is the audit, legal and professional fees. I doubt whether the private sector charges the same rate as local authorities do to maintained schools. Perhaps academies should be required to employ local authority services, if the quote is lower than that from the private sector?

SEND is the other area where spending needs reviewing. For many, the cost of an EHCP started early in the primary sector should be the first point of focus. Are there differences between schools in different locations, and if so, then why? Can an early diagnosis save costs.

What of Education Other than at School packages? How much are they costing the system, and why are they necessary in such a growing number of cases?

With 150 plus local authorities, how much might be saved from present budgets in order to support investment in teaching and learning in the new world created by the latest technological revolution?