Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what his Department's estimate was of the level of cash reserves held by multi-academy trusts as of 25 November 2021.

It is prudent financial planning for academy trusts to build reserves. Even trusts with strong balance sheets and adequate reserves can find themselves in a vulnerable position if they have insufficient cash assets. Academy trusts are accountable for, and transparent about, their reserves. As part of their short and long term financial planning, they must have a policy for holding reserves set out alongside financial data in their published annual accounts. These are clear requirements of the Academy Trust Handbook, which is available here: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/academy-trust-handbook.

The department publishes the Sector Annual Report and Accounts (SARA), which consolidates all academy accounts into one document. The last published report includes data on surpluses by academy trust size (page 25, figure 11b), available here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/968362/SARA_Academies_Sector_Annual_Report_and_Accounts_201819_-_accessible.pdf.

The report for the 2019/20 academic year will be published in December 2021 and will include updated data on surpluses.

The National Audit Office’s recently published report on the financial sustainability of schools in England contains information about surpluses in all academy trusts (both single and multi-academy trusts), available here: https://www.nao.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Financial-sustainability-of-schools-in-England.pdf. This reports that the net position across all academy trusts in the 2019/20 academic year was a cumulative surplus of £3.1 billion.

Data for the 2019/20 academic year on the financial position of individual academy trusts, including their surplus position, is available in academy trusts individual accounts and the schools financial benchmarking website, available here: https://schools-financial-benchmarking.service.gov.uk/.