Commenting on the report by the House of Commons Public Accounts
Committee ‘Academy accounts and performance’, Geoff Barton,
General Secretary of the Association of School and College
Leaders, said:
“We support sensible and proportionate measures to improve the
transparency of financial reporting and ensure that parents are
able to raise their concerns over the running of an academy
trust. It is already a requirement that academy trusts publish
their annual accounts on their website where they are easily
accessible to the public. More financial information about
individual schools within a trust may be helpful but any new
requirement must be implemented in a way that does not
significantly add to the considerable bureaucratic burden on
trusts.
“There are about 7,500 academies in England and the vast majority
of them are very well run and pride themselves on listening to
the views of parents. The biggest problem they face is not the
fine detail of financial reporting but the fact that the level of
government funding to schools is completely inadequate. We
support the recommendation of the Public Accounts Committee that
Ofsted should examine and report on whether the quality of
education is being affected by the need to make savings.
“We note the committee’s concerns about the number of responses
awaited to the Department for Education’s process of gathering
information over how asbestos is being managed in schools. The
committee suggests naming and shaming those bodies which have not
responded but it would surely be more productive to understand
what factors are holding up responses. The real problem is not
response rates but the fact that there is no clear plan at
government level over how to fund the removal of asbestos from
school buildings and schools are desperately short of the money
they need to finance such work.”
