The NAO said 'an actual or forecast deficit' was the main reason for a trust to be on the list (51% of the 37 trusts on the list in July 2014). It said one criteria for being on the list was if a trust forecast a budget deficit of 5 per cent or more - but it said: 'Officials exercise judgement in identifying the most serious cases. This means that not all academies that currently forecast a deficit of 5% or more appear on the list, nor does the Agency intervene formally in all academies identified as causing concern'.
According to the NAO, between October 2012 and April 2014, 104 academies have featured on the Agency’s list of concern at least once, with around 40 typically featuring at any one time.
As such it noted that: 'The number on the list has not changed significantly as the number of academies has increased.'
This could be seen as a good thing but it is hard to see why the number of academies on this list has not increased proportionally with the number of new academies. It would even seem reasonable to expect the proportion of academy trusts with financial problems to rise considering there has been an 83% drop in the financial assistance provided to new sponsored academies - the NAO said £148 million was spent opening 67 sponsored in 10/11 which reduced to £96 million for 393 sponsored academies in 13/14.
Similarly the NAO had noted difficulty in tracking DfE decisions on whether to intervene formally or informally over inadequate pupil attainment and was unable to see consistency in which trusts were sent pre-warning letters.
The DfE website shows there are currently 14 active financial notices to improve and one closed one. There is a much larger list of pre-warning letters and the list includes many of those with financial notices to improve.
Overviews of NAO report: Guardian, and again the Guardian -
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