Multi-academy Trusts

Lord Watson of Invergowrie Excerpts

Wednesday 10th July 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My noble friend is entirely correct. Again, we have done a lot to strengthen the quality of academy trust boards. We have organised a programme called Academy Ambassadors, finding more than 1,000 commercial individuals who have volunteered to join trusts over the past four years, bringing extra rigour and scrutiny. The regional schools commissioners have carried out 1,000 trust reviews in the last academic year, which also requires that non-exec members of the board attend those meetings.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, the rather blithe dismissal of concerns by the Minister runs counter to the Public Accounts Committee, which reported six months ago that financial controls in schools needed to be strengthened and that,

“the Department for Education’s … oversight and intervention needs to be more rigorous”

The fact is that the Government have virtually no powers to rein in those academy trusts that are acting in a cavalier manner with public funds. I know that the Minister wrote to several academies earlier this year asking them to justify excessive salaries; can he say whether the Harris Federation was one of them? I acknowledge the good results that that trust’s schools produce, but it is the third largest trust in England and it has 11 staff earning more than £150,000 a year. Yet the largest trust, United Learning, has just one. Does that not make the Minister curious?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

I am afraid it does not, my Lords, because the Harris trust is delivering the most extraordinary level of education improvement in the country. If you take the cost of that senior management team and divide it by the number of pupils in that trust, you will see that it is extraordinarily good value.