“Topslicing”: the great under-reported controversy of the academies policy

A government truly committed to addressing weaknesses of the multi-academy trust system would be looking at this.

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Much of my working life is spent interrogating and exposing weaknesses in the academies system. Some of these are well-known, and much debated: the policy’s removal of the oversight of schools from local democratic structures, for example, or sky-high pay for academy trust chief executives.

But one aspect of the way the policy has been set up, which has attracted a lot less attention at a national level, has nevertheless generated considerable on-the-ground controversy, in individual stories I have covered in the last few months. It deserves some time in the spotlight.

The issue is what is disparagingly known as “topslicing”: the re-allocation of a proportion of schools’ frontline budgets towards central spending, controlled by multi-academy trusts’ head offices.

Multi-academy trusts’ annual accounts have a section on these “central charges”. This details, in many cases, how much schools have paid for a range of services which have been provided by, or organised via, head office. Services paid for in this way can vary from school improvement support to human resources, finance, public relations/communications and grounds maintenance.  In some cases, the accounts disclose what proportion of schools’ core funding the trust takes as this topslice.

Why can this be controversial? Well, there can be considerable contention on the ground over high topslice amounts, which can be exacerbated by what seems an extraordinary lack of transparency and top-downedness in the decision-making.

In January, I witnessed how what can seem incredibly technical, arcane questions around a funding formula could generate huge unhappiness within school communities, on attending a campaign demonstration outside the Department for Education in central London.

The protest, by the National Education Union, concerned the Arthur Terry Learning Partnership (ATLP), a 24-school academy chain operating in the West Midlands. It had recently become clear, via the trust’s 2024-25 accounts, that this trust had a topslice of more than 20 per cent. This meant that more than one in every five pounds meant to be funding its schools was being allocated for spending by head office*. There was an extra layer of contention here, too, as the NEU said that the trust had admitted that cash allocated by the government specifically for spending on pupil premium and special educational needs pupils had been used in calculating how much individual schools within the trust should pay as the topslice. 

I spoke to teachers who were livid that, they told me, there was not enough money in their academies to fund basic resources, and that head office spending was taking cash from children who desperately needed it. With ATLP having also recently announced redundancies such that classroom workers now feared paying with their jobs, the vigorous campaign of opposition eventually led to the departure of this trust’s entire strategic management.

Concerns over a topslice figure also said to be greater than 20 per cent also led to a government decision last year to break up another reasonably-sized chain – the University of Brighton Academies Trust. 

In the last week, I’ve also reported on huge increases in central charges, again as was deducible from their recently-published 2024-25 annual accounts, at two other academy trusts.

At Initio Learning Trust, a 19-school chain based in Dorset, the topslice ballooned last year from 3.9 to 7.5 per cent of core (“General Annual Grant”) funding. At Anthem Schools Trust, which runs 15 schools across different parts of England from its base in central London, the increase was from 6.4 to 11.9 per cent. 

Secondary schools, for example, saw their bills to the central trust increase by six-figure sums – far higher than the rate of inflation - with it not being clear, especially in Anthem’s case, if anything extra was being provided in return. In Initio’s case, job cuts have been on the horizon to accompany this, leaving some parent critics to wonder if these frontline losses could be avoided, were so much money not leaving the schools in this way.

The trusts will often argue that these centrally-organised services represent good value for their schools, or indeed that this is one of the main attractions of joining a group of academies in the first place. On the other hand, there are constant concerns that spending on highly-paid head office-based managers – with well-remunerated trust chief executives just the most visible aspect of this – needlessly diverts money away from the front line. 

Top-down decision-making

But what perhaps staggers me most about these developments is just how top-down decision-making can be, with respect to funding allocations which, as these controversies underline, can have hugely consequential impacts on the ground.

As far as I am aware, multi-academy trusts’ decisions on central charging are not subject to any public scrutiny whatsoever. Although the central trust will no doubt talk privately to headteachers of its individual academies, for example, about what the topslice for the year will be, there is no public discussion, and individual schools will have no formal involvement in decision-making. At no point, for example, does the trust need to put forward a proposal and consult on it publicly. The central trust just takes a decision. In other words, this government policy puts huge trust in the trusts themselves to act in the public interest, without any public oversight or outside influence on decision-making.

Academy trust accounts, though they often include statements stating what the rate of topslice is, and how much individual schools are charged, are not even required to do this. For they can simply decide to keep all of their schools’ funding in one big pot – what is known as “GAG pooling” – without disclosing funding allocations to any particular academy. Government policy is thus that this is, effectively, all the trust’s money, to do with as it sees fit, and with no need for public disclosure on how much money went to each school.

The staggering lack of information as to what drives topslice calculations in individual cases was underscored vividly last week, in the ATLP case again. There, it was announced that the trust was to make what appeared a huge cut in its central charges – reducing that 20-per cent-plus calculation to 5.5 per cent – without any explanation as to how such a rapid reduction had been possible. 

All of this contrasts vividly, in terms of transparency and institution-by-institution input into decision-making, with how schools funding has generally operated via the local authority system in the past two or three decades.

Under the schools forum policy, local authorities have what the National Association of Head Teachers has described as a “consultative and decision-making body where schools can put forward their views to the local authority on matters such as the allocation and distribution of funding [and] supplies and services”. 

Schools forums have representatives from local authority schools and academies, as well as other groups such as nursery and college providers, and meetings are required to be open to the public, with papers, agendas and minutes having to be, as the NAHT puts it, “publicly available well in advance of each meeting”.

In other words, schools forums see discussions held in public, with stakeholders represented, on how public funds are to be distributed to schools.

None of this happens in the academies sector. There, it is a case of decision-making in private, by a small group of influential actors – in practice, the senior managers within the trust putting forward proposals to the trust board, meeting in private – without any formal place at the discussion table for those on the end of this decision-making.

This decision-making can shield organisations from scrutiny over other possible aspects of controversy, such as whether to shift money from a school or schools in a particular community to one in another. Again, there can be no public debate on this because all decision-making takes place behind the scenes, with little scrutiny.

“Privatisation” is often a word used to describe the academies policy by its critics. This movement to decision-making-in-private makes the word seem appropriate.

Although this remains a largely under-the-radar aspect to the academies debate, its ability to drive controversy on the ground should not be underestimated. A government which truly wanted to address the problems with this flagship policy – and, sadly, Labour’s moves on this so far have been underwhelming and confusing – would be taking a good look at this.

*The trust denied this, although it seemed clear from the simple maths of the accounts, with the topslice easily worked out by dividing the total central charges paid by the schools by the trust's total General Annual Grant income. The fact that the trust sought to deny this seemed, again, to underline the lack of openness with respect to this policy.