The new Interim Chief Executive of SchoolsCompany Trust has apologised in a letter to parents of pupils at the Goodwin Academy for ‘previous financial failings, which are unacceptable’.
Sadly, this has come as little surprise to me, as I foresaw issues as early as 2014, when I noted in an article that SchoolsCompany had contributed to the startling decline of the predecessor school Castle Community College, in Deal from Ofsted Outstanding to Special Measures in three short years. As a reward SchoolsCompany took over as sponsor of the school, which it renamed Goodwin Academy.
Since then the Academy has limped on, unpopular with a third of its places unfilled, and underperforming, although 2017 results at last look better. Unusually, eight of the Company Trustees are employees of the Trust, although seven resigned in October including the Executive Principal of Goodwin after the school received a Financial Notice to Improve from the Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA). This left the school with just four Trustees, although the CEO and founder of the company, Elias Achilleos now appears to have been replaced also. The Trust has demonstrably failed some of the Financial Notice's requirements for improvement.
![Goodwin Academy]()
The school will clearly have a future in its new £25 million premises opened just four months ago on October 6th, just three weeks before Trustees resigned en masse, but it looks increasingly likely it will not be with Schools Company.
SchoolsCompany Academy Trust
This Academy Trust was founded on three small Pupil Referral Units in Devon 2015. It formally took over the Goodwin Academy in July 2016, just a year before being served with the Notice to Improve. The Trust was formed by Schools Company Ltd founded in 2011 by Mr Achilleos: ‘The company was created to build on our successful careers in teaching, managing and leading in challenging urban mainstream and alternative secondary schools, mainly in London and in schools across the UK’, Although its early ambitions were to take on a number of academies, unsurprisingly it has not been trusted with any more, but the company is now establishing The Royal Academy for Construction and Fabrication in Nigeria.
The August 2016 Trust Company Report, the most recent published (2017 promises to look interesting) reports that ‘There are currently deficits across the Trust. Details of the deficit and the arrangements in place to resolve the position are included in Note 18’. Sadly, whilst Note 18 details £1.4 million of creditors, there is no mention of any arrangements to resolve the position as promised. My expectation is that the current position has come about because of the preparation of the 2017 accounts, which have not yet been published (but see Angela Barry, below). The 2016 accounts list eleven trustees, eight of whom were employed by the Trust on salaries between £80,000 and £20,000, just two, the Executive Principal and the Executive Principal of the Devon PRUs having an education role. Just four remained after the clearout in October 2017: Mr Achilleos; Mr Akhurst, project manager for a building construction company; Mr Parmar, an education consultant; and Mr Rees, a Legal Partner at Price Waterhouse (the last three all unpaid). The Trust has completely failed the ESFA's requirement to 'immediately strengthen the Trust Board with RSC approved interim Trustees, no later than September 2017' and there were also a long list of additional requirements.
The Financial Situation
The Financial Notice to Improve is scathing in its criticisms of the Trust Management, concerns including: 'short notice and urgent requests for additional funding' and lack of 'the Trust’s response to this financial situation and this has been highlighted again by the failure to produce a recovery plan by the revised deadline of 17 July'. It continues by highlighting the Trust's failures: 'Failure to ensure good financial management and effective internal controls; Failure to have sufficient oversight over financial management and governance; Failure to take sufficient action to avoid the Trust’s current cash-flow deficit position; Failure to maintain and provide ESFA with accurate/robust budget forecasts; and Failure to meet the conditions of the additional grant funding as agreed in May 2016 and detailed in the grant letter of 21 June 2016'. All in all a damning indictment of SchoolsCompany's incompetence. Amongst the EFSA's stringent requirements are to: conduct an urgent review of all central trust income and expenditure to be incorporated in the recovery plan and submitted to ESFA by end of August; urgently seek independent verification on the closing position of the 2016/17 end year budget forecast position; implement action in line with the recovery plan to return the Trust to a surplus budget position during 2017/18; demonstrate that every possible economy is being made to achieve a balanced budget – this must consider the Trust wide SMT structure, service providers, curriculum provision and staffing costs across the four academies; provide an organogram of the central SMT staffing structure matching the current number of academies; and; provide the ESFA with monthly financial monitoring/progress reports mapping progress in these areas to work towards securing a balanced budget for 2017/18. Given this week's news, it looks as if the Trust has failed to met these conditions. The 2017 Accounts, anticipated in June 2018, should make interesting reading.
Goodwin Academy
The Academy appointed a new Principal, Simon Smith in 2016, who has had a long career at the school and its predecessors. You will find an excellent history of the good side of these schools, written by a Year 12 student, Arran Powell, here. Castle Community College was led by an outstanding headteacher, Christine Chapman, who took the school to an Ofsted Outstanding in 2011, although she left shortly before to be replaced by Mr Bunn. At this time the school was heavily oversubscribed, but after she left it went into sharp decline, whilst neighbouring Walmer Science College was running short of numbers. KCC decided to merge the two schools , controversially on the CCC side, so Walmer was effectively closed. In March 2014, the school was placed in Special Measures, with Leadership and Governance being heavily criticised. An article I wrote at the time highlighted the responsibility of SchoolsCompany Ltd, in the decline. That year the Year 7 intake had slumped to 127 with a PAN of 180, having also absorbed the children of Walmer. This year it is down even further to 108, which will have made a considerable contribution to the financial difficulties. In 2014, the school had the worst GCSE results in Kent with just 20% of pupils scoring five GCSEs Grades A-C, but has slowly improved on this, year on year, except that 2017, using new GCSE measures has seen the Progress 8 score at -0.32, below average nationally, and also below 2016's, -0.08, but respectable and still higher than a third of all non-selective schools. The second measure, Attainment 8, has also seen the level fall from 42.2 to 37.4, below over a third of all non-selective schools.
Angela Barry
Angela Barry, the new Interim Chief Executive Officer of the Trust is by way of being a trouble shooter for the Regional Schools Commissioner, who has responsibility for academies in the South East. She is a member of his Headteacher Board, although retired from being CEO of a small primary Academy Trust last summer. Followers of this website will know about her, as she performed a similar task for the infamous Lilac Sky Academy Trust (see below), until its closure in December 2016.
Lilac Sky Schools Ltd
This notorious company, which ran the now defunct Lilac Sky Schools Academy Trust (LSSAT) has crossed the path of Goodwin Academy/Castle Community College (CCC) a number of times.
When it was in favour with favour with KCC (as was SchoolsCompany), they were advising on CCC as it plunged from Outstanding to Special Measures in just three years, probably the fastest fall from grace in Kent. They worked with Principal Phillip Bunn who oversaw the decline and was so impressed with his work that he became a Trustee of LSSAT and their Head of Safeguarding. He resigned at the time Angela Barry joined the Board as Chief Executive, one of her first task being to withdraw the false 2015 Company Accounts and replace them with an honest set, highly critical of previous management.
Until we have further information, one can only speculate what has been going on behind the scenes at SchoolsCompany, but the financial difficulties and actions of the RSC appear similar to some at LSSAT, where the Trust collapsed owing large sums of money. We can be fairly confident that Angela Barry will face up to the difficulties.
