Government still footing the bill for failed Bright Tribe chain and sister trust, four years after closure, DfE report reveals

Disclosures in DfE documents also reveal extra payments of £3m over four years in relation to three free schools in England's South West.

The government was still paying the bill for one of England’s highest-profile academy trust failures – four years after the last of its schools were transferred to other organisations.

Bright Tribe Trust, which featured in a BBC Panorama documentary in 2018 in which it was accused of misusing government funds and which lost all its schools in 2018-19, nevertheless received £84,644 from the Department for Education in 2022-23.

Meanwhile, its sister chain Adventure Learning Academy Trust (ALAT), which lost its schools in 2019, received £34,960 in 2022-23, a recently-released DfE report discloses.

An annexe to the DfE’s Academy Schools Sector report for 2022-23 sets out costs of policy failure which also include bills for some closed free schools – as well as a £1.9 million transfer to another academy trust which has featured extensively on Education Uncovered, and which took the total extra taxpayer support for three free schools it took over to £3 million over four years.