Guardian cash cow questions

A brief look at some of the issues covered in Daniel Boffey and Warwick Mansell piece in the Observer: 'Are England's academies becoming a cash cow for business?'

Charity used land leased to academies to secure a loan

Schools Week reported that land leased to two academies for 125 years at peppercorn rent is under threat after the sponsoring 'charity used the land as security for a mortgage to buy an adjacent plot for £1.4 million...'

MATs in the media

Schools Week: How MATs want to be inspected - a look at evidence submitted by big MATs to the Education Select Committee.

MAT used unapproved loans to cover slow EFA payments

Unauthorised loans with a value of £150,000 were taken out by Chapel Street Schools, a multi-academy trust (MAT) which runs six schools. Another loan of £85,000 was also borrowed around the time the initial loans were repaid.

MATs: don't build, it's easier to take over schools

A story in the Manchester Evening News from May says: ' ...the Co-op trust, which had initially expressed an interest, has now told the town hall it would rather take over existing schools under the government’s forced academisation policy, announced in March’s budget. Building a new school is ‘labour intensive’ compared to simply taking over existing ones, it said. It is understood other trusts have taken a similar view.'

MATs to build homes for teachers?

Harris calls for right to build homes for its teachers:
The Guardian (April 16, 2016): 'changes to planning regulations and the offer of government finance would allow Harris and others to build low-cost housing"
And more recently in the Evening Standard (May 24, 2016): 'We want to be empowered by government to build housing on the surplus land some of our schools have, which is currently totally unused.'

FT: MAT model rolled out in prisons

The FT said: 'The introduction of semi-autonomous “reform prisons” will result in groups of prisons being run by a single governor in the same way that academies have turned into chains of schools.' (May 18, 2016)

Supply teacher spending: academy Vs maintained

Figures supplied by DfE in response to a parliamentary question.

Supply teacher spend by local authorities in maintained schools in England
Vs
Supply teacher spend by academy schools in England:

Year	10/11	11/12	12/13	13/14	14/15
Maintained	£906m	£766m	£743m	£812m	£821m
Academies	-	£99m	£211m	£354m	-

255 academies applied for CIF loans in 2015/16 - plans to extend scheme.

In response to an FOI request the Education Funding Agency has said it received 255 loan applications alongside grant applications in its 2015/16 Condition Improvement Fund process. The EFA added that this loan facility could be extended to larger multi-academy trusts (MATs).

130 academies 're-brokered' between trusts

UPDATE June 15: Sir David Carter provides more details about number and breakdown of re-brokered academies: 119 total since Sept 2014, of which 68 from one multi-academy trust to another and 51 from single academy trust to MAT (BBC). This adds to the picture of increasing numbers of academies that are being re-brokered to new trusts after failing to make necessary improvements.