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13 April 2026

Tag: school finances

Booming academy transfer market pushes costs to potential £30m

More than 100 schools are now rebrokered every year as the booming academy transfer market pushes costs to a potential £30 million. Figures obtained by Schools Week have revealed 235 academies were handed to new trusts in the past two calendar years, up from just 26 in 2014. Rebrokering costs are not routinely published, but […]

Meet the £200k-per-year academy chiefs who look after just a handful of schools

Growing numbers of academy leaders, many of them responsible for only a handful of schools, now earn more than £200,000 a year. In one case a headteacher at a single academy trust is now paid £220,000, while an associate head at the same trust is on £145,000. A Schools Week investigation also revealed two chief […]

Revealed: The 23 trusts that broke rules over £4m related-party transactions

Twenty-three academy trusts breached funding rules last year when they made payments of more than £4 million to companies related to members of their staff or trustees. For the first time, Schools Week can reveal who the trusts are and the 26 transactions in which they failed to show they were fully compliant with rules […]

Nick Gibb ‘comfortable’ with schools’ approach to cost cutting

The schools minister Nick Gibb has said he is “comfortable” with the way schools are dealing with rising cost pressures. It comes despite headteachers recently revealing how they are having to cut back on textbooks, cleaning and maintenance to balance the books, on top of making teaching and support staff redundant. The Institute for Fiscal […]

Accounts Watch: Academy trust chief gets £85,000 severance pay-out

An academy trust chief executive who resigned after a misconduct investigation received a payout of of more than £85,000. Denise Shepherd was suspended as chief executive of the Thinking Schools Academy Trust (TSAT), which runs 10 schools in Kent and Portsmouth, in May last year. It was reported in a national newspaper that a whistleblower […]

National funding formula: the winners and losers by school type

Schools in inner London and urban areas are most likely to lose out in the government’s funding shake-up. The Department for Education has published the second consultation on its national funding formula today – revealing more details about which schools will win and lose under the new cash distribution model. The document shows that schools […]

National funding formula: the winners and losers by local authority area

The documents for the second stage of the government’s consultation on its proposed national funding formula have been published, and give a breakdown of indicative gains and losses for each local authority in England. Based on a calculation of the percentage change in funding in the first year of the NFF in 2018/19, we can see that […]