A decision over whether the free schools charity led by Toby Young will have its Department for Education grant funding renewed, will be announced in the next month, Tes has learned.

Yesterday, DfE minister Sam Gyimah said the department was looking at “options for support” for the New Schools Network (NSN), after the controversy over the botched attempt to appoint Mr Young, its chief executive, to the Office for Students.

The NSN is a charity that has received grant funding from the government to provide “pre-application support” to people looking to open a free school since November 2011.

Its funding was last renewed in 2014, when it came out top in a competitive bidding process for a grant which the government valued at just less than £3 million.

Re-tendering process

However, the government is currently re-tendering this contract. In December it invited bids for a grant valued between £2.8 and £3.4 million to provide “a support service to the free schools programme”.

Covering 2018-19 and 2019-20, with an option to extend for a third year, invitations to bid for the grant closed on the 19 January, with the contract due to start on 1 April.

With the NSN receiving most of its income from the government, this means the fate of the charity will be known in the next month. According to one of the government’s bid documents, the DfE had planned to “issue the grant funding agreement in February 2018”.

The document also shows that should the NSN lose its contract, it could have up to 19 members of staff transferred to a different organisation.

“Bidders should note that NSN currently receives grant funding to support free school applicants,” the document states.  

“Depending on how the successful bidder decides to deliver the support described in this invitation to bid, the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 2006 may or may not apply to staff employed by the current grant recipient.

“Based on the information provided by the current grant recipient, we understand there are currently up to 19 employees potentially in scope to transfer if TUPE applies with a total salary bill (including pension and national insurance contributions) of £738,608 per annum.”

According to the NSN’s latest accounts for the year to 31 March 2017, it employed an average of 29 people during 2016-17 and had total staff costs of £982,040.

Toby Young forced to resign

Earlier this week, the commissioner for public appointments published a report that stated the DfE had not followed a fair process when it attempted to appoint Mr Young as a non-executive director to the OfS.

Mr Young was forced to resign from the OfS nine days after his appointment was unveiled, because of articles he had written - including about inclusion in schools and eugenics - as well as crude comments he had made on social media, including about women’s breasts.

In a debate in Parliament yesterday, Lord Storey, the Liberal Democrats’ education spokesman in the House of Lords, asked for assurances that the awarding of the free school grant would be conducted fairly.

He said: “The work of supporting free schools - which is, of course, the raison d’etre of the NSN - has been out to tender and bids are currently under consideration for this multi-million-pound contract.

“Will the minister offer an assurance the award of this contract will be properly managed and correct procedures will be followed in every detail?”

Viscount Younger of Leckie, the government’s spokesman on higher education, replied: “As for the noble Lord’s question about the NSN, that is very much a matter for it.

“The NSN is a small independent charity. I do not want to go further on that front.”

A spokesman for the NSN told Tes: “NSN has worked with two-thirds of the 696 free schools that have opened or been approved to open so far. These include some of the country’s most successful schools, such as the Tauheedul Islam Boys’ High School in Blackburn, which was ranked the third highest-performing school in England in the 2017 Progress 8 league tables, and the London Academy of Excellence in Newham, which received 22 offers from Oxford and Cambridge this year.

“The only consideration in awarding this contract should be which bidder is best placed to support the delivery of new, high-performing free schools.”

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