Six per cent of academy trusts miss accounts deadline

From the EFA bulletin:

http://www.education.gov.uk/aboutdfe/executiveagencies/efa/efaebulletins/h00231408/issue-44/academy-financial-statements?utm_campaign=bulletin&utm_medium=email&utm_source=jan23Acad

'Thank you to the 94% of academy trusts preparing accounts at 31 August 2013 that have now submitted their accounts.



'Management letters and value for money statements are also due. These are requirements of the funding agreement and the deadline was 31 December 2013. If any element of your return is outstanding, please email it to us at AcademiesFinancialMonitoring.EFA@education.gsi.gov.uk.'

I haven't looked for up-to-date figures but in January last year the DfE said: 'Figures out today (Friday 11 January 2013) reveal that there are now 3,167 schools in England either open as academies or in the pipeline to become academies.'

This figure may now be higher and some of these will not be responsible for submitting their own accounts. But six per cent of 3,617 is 217 - which may be a very misleading estimate of how many trusts have not submitted accounts on time (but the figure shouldn't be any lower than that).

The DfE is encouraging academy trusts to submit accounts returns, due by Jan 31, via 'a new facility hosted by our delivery partner, Deloitte.' 'As explained in our last e-bulletin, we have introduced a new way for academy trusts to submit financial returns such as accounts returns and budget forecasts.'

In its bulletin about accounts returns the EFA said: 'If your academy trust was open and prepared accounts at 31 August 2013, you need to submit an accounts return to us by 31 January 2014 by uploading it to the new Deloitte OnLine site.'