Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, which academy chains are banned from sponsoring any more schools.

An academy sponsor is an organisation or person who has received approval from the department to support an underperforming academy or group of academies. A range of bodies and institutions, including multi-academy trusts, can apply to become academy sponsors.

An academy sponsor is paused if any or all of the following conditions exist:

• significant concerns with educational impact;
• serious financial concerns, for example where the Education and Skills Funding Agency has issued a financial notice to improve due to financial non-compliance, breaches of funding agreements; and/or
• serious concerns about the leadership or governance of the sponsor, which may include due diligence and counter extremism issues.

Academy sponsors remain on pause unless and until the concerns that led to them being paused have been resolved. Just because a sponsor is not on pause does not mean it is automatically allowed to take on more schools. A rigorous process is followed for all sponsorship decisions.

The following list shows all academy sponsors that are paused as of 22 May 2018:

1. Bright Futures Educational Trust;
2. Grace Foundation;
3. CfBT Schools Trust;
4. City of Wolverhampton Academy Trust;
5. Future Schools Trust;
6. The Education Fellowship Trust;
7. University of Chester Academies Trust;
8. Wakefield City Academies Trust;
9. The Silver Birch Academy;
10. Plymouth CAST;
11. TBAP Trust;
12. Zail Enterprises Ltd;
13. and
14. Chrysalis Multi-Academy Trust.