Board papers offer more insights into fundraising and financial challenges at Harris Federation

Harris Academy Peckham, which has spare places

Further insights into the financial challenges facing even one of England’s most successful and well-connected academy chains have been provided in board papers published by the Harris Federation, with one of its most high-profile schools having implemented a strategy to improve its “financial viability”.

The papers, marked “confidential” but nevertheless available on Harris’s website, see Lord Harris, the chain’s sponsor, warning at a meeting of its full board in December last year that “we will need to focus increasingly on tightening budgets over time”.

A look at some of the detailed figures in these papers provides insights into why Harris, which has comfortably the highest pay bill for its most senior managers of any academy trust, has not been immune from the financial difficulties facing schools as a whole.

They state how Harris faced an in-year deficit in 2016-17, which those board minutes from December 2017 said this was set to be £3.6 million. Harris’s annual income for that year was £168.3m