Investigation: how years of financial pressure at a small multi-academy trust appear to have culminated in the government writing off its �3.7 million debts

Years of problematic financial oversight of a now-defunct multi-academy trust have culminated in the Department for Education appearing to write off its �3.7m debt as its schools were passed to another chain, an investigation by Education Uncovered has revealed.

Shrewsbury Academies Trust, based in the Shropshire town, appears from its recently-published accounts to have owed the government £3.7 million at the time its three schools were transferred to the Marches Academy Trust last September.

There is no sign of this debt having been taken on by the schools’ new trust, suggesting the taxpayer has footed the outstanding deficit of the former charity which appears from a Whitehall report to have relied on “significant” extra government support for almost its entire six-year existence.

Accounts for Shrewsbury Academies Trust (SAT) published last year also saw its longstanding leadership effectively accused by a new management regime, which had been parachuted in by the DfE, of “inadequate” financial controls including spending on alcohol. However, the trust’s former chief executive, Geoff Pettengell, told Education Uncovered that the amounts were trivial and standard practice in secondary schools and that he had been made to be the “fall guy” of the affair.

Pettengell added that the trust’s financial problems came about largely because of a protracted attempt to merge its two secondary schools on one site, which the DfE had initially said it would fund but then changed its mind. He said the government would have saved money if it had funded this move originally, rather than waiting until SAT closed and then having to write off loans made to the trust. He also criticised the system through which schools  are transferred between trusts and the operation of the government’s academies funding agency.