The founder of a collapsed academy trust under investigation for its “luxury” booze spend and handing pay-outs to senior staff rehired the next day has been banned from running schools.
Trevor Averre-Beeson is “unsuitable” to “take part in the management” of a school, an official government barring notice published on Friday states.
The notice comes seven years after government intervention at the scandal-hit Lilac Sky Schools Trust, which Averre-Beeson co-founded and then initially led.
Ministers have repeatedly failed to honour their promise to publish a now seven-year investigation into the trust, shut down in 2016 with its nine schools handed to others.
But several investigations by Schools Week have shed light on the saga, including financial “impropriety” reported by government trouble-shooters.
This included misuse of capital funding for four schools, forcing new leaders to seek additional cash to ensure classrooms could open “with the necessary basic equipment and furniture”.
Annual accounts also revealed “inappropriate” spend on luxury alcohol for annual awards evenings and council grants paid straight to the bank account of Averre-Beeson’s consultancy firm.
Christopher Bowler, chief executive of the trust after Beeson stepped down, was also barred in a separate notice published the same day. The orders also prevent them from serving as governors.
Such section 128 orders allow the secretary of state to prohibit a person from taking part in the management of an independent school on prescribed grounds connected with the person’s suitability.
DfE won’t say why pair were banned
The Department for Education did not respond to a request for comment about why both notices lacked the usual summary details explaining why the order was issued.
The direction just states their conduct was “so inappropriate, that in the opinion of the appropriate authority, it makes a person unsuitable to take part in the management” of a school.
The government had to write off more than £500,000 in funding it was owed by Lilac Sky trust after its closure.
Attempts by Schools Week to obtain the investigation report have been continually rebuffed.
The government first promised to publish it by summer 2019. However officials would only say in 2021 this will be published “when legal due process has concluded”.
After leaving Lilac Sky, Averre-Beeson took over the Henriette Le Forestier private school in south London in September 2016. It closed six months later after going bust.
Auditors found Averre-Beeson had an “overdrawn” £150,000 loan when it collapsed. Despite his firm owing creditors more than £900,000 – including £231,000 to former employees – just £30,000 was to be recouped from the loan.
Averre-Beeson was “unable to pay the full amount due to his personal circumstances”.
When contacted for comment, Averre-Beeson put the phone down. Bowler could not be reached for comment.
In 2020, the government banned Perry Beeches Academy Trust headteacher Liam Nolan – the first time such orders have been used for leaders involved in academy scandals.
It followed calls to show they “had teeth” to deal with those implicated.
The Lilac Sky saga
Trevor Averre-Beeson made his name as the “superhead” that turned around Islington Green secondary, the school that Tony Blair rejected for his children.
Peter Hyman, a former Blair aide who now advises Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer and taught at the school, reportedly wrote in a later book that “Tony and Trevor have a lot in common“.
Averre-Beeson returned to the spotlight when he was parachuted in as superhead of the Salisbury School in Enfield, north London, where the American for-profit firm Edison Schools had a £1 million contract to run the school over three years.
Enfield council did not renew the contract, and the school (then called Turin Grove) became an academy.
He then co-founded the school improvement firm, Lilac Sky Schools, which he said was invited by the Department for Education in 2012 to set up and sponsor the Lilac Sky Schools Academy Trust (LSSAT).
He had previously called on government to let for-profit firms turn around failing schools.
Lilac Sky Schools provided services totalling more than £800,000 to the trust.
Averre-Beeson said to “avoid any perceived conflicts of interest” he “voluntarily decided my companies should stop providing services to the trust in 2015”. He also stepped down as chief executive.
Christopher Bowler, who had been a director at the trust since it was founded, then led the trust, before resigning as a director in August 2016.
Averre-Beeson’s improvement firm also had a contract to advise regional school commissioners on school improvement.
One of the regions was led by Dominic Herrington, who later oversaw the rebrokering of the trust’s schools. He served as national schools commissioner before leaving the role last year.
Averre-Beeson has previously claimed the revised annual accounts submitted by government trouble-shooters, that revealed financial impropriety, were inaccurate and an “attempt…to maximise embarrassment to me”.
The government has repeatedly refused to release the investigation report, claiming as recently as 2021 that it was still ongoing.
The DfE told the information watchdog last year it believed publication “could have the potential to prejudice any regulatory or legal action that may be undertaken”.
It added that “further due process is required to finalize the draft report and ensure that the facts and findings are presented appropriately”.
Your thoughts