When first introducing the concept of the academies movement, Sir Tony Blair wrote in his memoir, A Journey, that it “belongs not to some remote bureaucracy, not to the rulers of government, local or national, but to itself, for itself. The school is in charge of its own destiny.”

Alas, for those of us on the front line of the academies movement, that vision has never felt further away than it does right now.

Over the past 14 years, the requirements on academy trusts to seek permissions from the Department for Education and the Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) on operational matters have increased significantly, to the point where civil servants now seem to maintain academy trusts with more routine prescription than local authority officers ever did.

As a telling example, the latest iteration of the Academy Trust Handbook - at 64 pages long - was promised to include few to no material changes. Yet the latest version means we now have a requirement for academy trusts to seek ESFA permission before entering into electric lease car schemes - another nail in the coffin of the autonomy that academies originally heralded.

Top-down control

If that sounds over the top, consider this roll call of the different ways academies are monitored: first, to ensure autonomy is not deployed recklessly, academy trusts are governed by not one but two tiers of independent scrutineers, with members and then trustees/directors (all unpaid) being legally responsible for the trust. Then there is the requirement for an accounting officer, being a statutory post, to be directly accountable to Parliament.

Trustees must appoint both internal and external auditors, and trusts must abide at all times by their funding agreements, their own articles of association and the annually updated Academy Trust Handbook.

Trusts also have to comply with the requirements of Companies House and with the principles of the Charity Commission’s Statement of Recommended Practice, and their compliance is tested annually via external audit.

Meanwhile, the Academies Accounts Direction - at a whopping 95 pages - becomes more onerous year on year.

Pause for breath. Next, the DfE has a practice where most trust growth applications or grant awards come - where approved - with the condition of having a school resource management adviser review.

Then we have Ofsted’s inspection of academies and MAT reviews (which appear to happen sporadically and without any clear rationale for why).

Without adding more operational prescription into annual updates, all of these assurance measures should be enough to provide both the hard and soft intervention for academy trusts that aren’t managing themselves well, while respecting the legal duties of governors and the executive to run the organisation with agency.

Yet trusts are becoming more and more micromanaged by the “remote bureaucracy”.

Stagnation and frustration

Why is that such a problem? Well, the responsiveness of central government is a major issue.

While education secretaries have been increasing the bureaucratic burden upon regional teams, successive chancellors have set unrealistic targets on the reduction of civil service departments, meaning the DfE and ESFA - like most others - appear to have a person-power issue, which breeds delay in both responsiveness and capacity to understand.

As an example, many growth applications in 2023-24 took the best part of a year to be considered, while the new significant change process was promised to provide a streamlined approach of a few weeks, which still left trusts waiting several months for a decision.

Those decisions are attached with micro-managing conditions relating to the mechanics of pupil placements and review periods, which should be the domain of school leaders and, by exception, trust governors.

All of this makes it incredibly hard for trusts to move quickly, be innovative and basically get stuff done. One of my colleagues, Gail Brown, of Ebor Academy Trust, shared the impact of this new bureaucratic requirement on her organisation when trying to select a provider for a car lease scheme.

“Our main aim in exploring a car lease scheme was to provide a staff benefit scheme that would provide staff, particularly those in remote locations with poor access to public transport, with affordable, sustainable transport solutions.

“Our procurement lead evaluated all suppliers on the CCS’ (Crown Commercial Service’s) framework, shortlisted and then selected the supplier we would like to move forward with. We were literally at that point when the announcement came that we should not go ahead.”

She is still waiting for approval for the deal.

Relax the reins

Of course, it is undeniable that some trust leaders have behaved badly, especially in the early days when oversight was weak, but the landscape of compliance requirements in 2024 is starkly different to what it was a decade ago.

Yet here we are: a sector that has experienced a creeping set of restrictions and requirements since 2010, is now at the point where central government has assumed the role that local authorities were deemed too large, distant and disconnected to do successfully.

I genuinely can’t think of any other part of the public sector where Whitehall has such direct involvement. How ironic that this is the rank opposite of what was intended by successive governments.

Is there hope on the horizon? Speaking at the Schools North East Academies Conference in Newcastle back in January 2023, Bridget Phillipson, now the education secretary,  declared that a Labour government would “end the needless micro-management” of schools.

Meanwhile, the recent announcement about the ESFA being absorbed by the DfE may not be the solution we need: indeed, in the short term it could create more paralysis in decision making, and we could end up with a more lethargic, bureaucratic leviathan as a result.

However, if this structural alteration also brings radical system change, it could go some way to countering many of the existing frustrations.

Overall, there is a long way to go to fulfil any commitment to reform. However, it’s early days. Here’s hoping the next four years bring a return to the trusted autonomy and agency the sector was promised all those years ago.

Warren Carratt is the CEO of Nexus Multi-Academy Trust

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