Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to help support academies with multimillion-pound deficits.

The department supports all academy trusts to have the capability to manage their resources effectively by providing high quality advice, tools, support and development to help schools protect against financial difficulty and enable excellent school resource management. Tools and guidance can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/schools-financial-health-and-efficiency.

Where academy trusts are experiencing financial difficulty, the department’s focus will be on prioritising support for the most serious cases, considering the financial, educational and governance aspects of the trust. The department may also commission a School Resource Management Adviser (SRMA) to support the trust. SRMAs are practising sector experts, such as school business professionals that work collaboratively with schools and trusts to provide independent, expert and tailored advice to schools and trusts on how to make best use of their resources to deliver the best possible educational outcomes for their pupils.

Where an academy trust is reporting a cumulative deficit, it may require additional financial support as part of their recovery plan. If approved, financial support will be repayable to the department within an agreed timeframe. Non-repayable funding will only be considered where there is no other reasonable means to protect pupils’ interests.