| SPOTLIGHT |
Councils have had to pay more than £22m to meet the costs – including legal fees and deficits – of schools converting to academies between 2011/12 and 2013/14, the Local Government Association has claimed.
The LGA called for the full costs of conversion, which “can run into hundreds of thousands of pounds for each school”, to be picked up by the Department for Education.
The Association argued that the academies programme “should be fully-funded by central government and not subsidised by local taxpayers at a time when councils are struggling with cuts of 40%”.
The £22m figure arose out of research among 77 councils that responded to an LGA survey.
Cllr David Simmonds, chairman of the LGA’s Children and Young People Board, said: “We are supportive of academies and free schools but it is simply not fair that some struggling schools are burdened with a deficit while others walk away to become academies and leave local taxpayers to foot the bill.
“Nor is it right that consultants and lawyers are making good money handling these conversions when local taxpayers expect this money to go towards other local priorities, whether that is improving other schools or fixing potholes.”
He added: “Councils already have to subsidise the costs of school places and free school meals from existing budgets. This is yet another example of central government not providing enough money to pay for its policies and of local communities being forced to pick up the tab.
“We have long been concerned the Department for Education does not have sufficient funds to support the rapid expansion in schools converting to academy status. Whitehall has acknowledged it lacks the capacity and local knowledge to oversee the 4,400 academies in England. Councils, with their role at the heart of their community, want to be able to hold all schools in their areas to account for the quality of the education they provide. It is not right that we are having to pay this money for legal and structural changes to schools, rather than it being spent in ways which directly benefit the achievements of pupils.”
Nick Weller, chairman of the Independent Academies Association, told the BBC that councils perhaps should be able to recoup the legal costs of academy conversion from the DfE. "However, if they are paying anything more than a few thousand pounds per school they are being overcharged."
Weller added that operating with a deficit was often a sign of a badly run school. "If local authorities ran their schools better in the first place there wouldn't be any deficits,” he argued.
