A new government schools task force led by Baroness Barran is set to launch in the new year aimed at simplifying financial reporting and data requirements on academy trusts, Tes has learned.
The academies minister is to hold a first meeting with sector bodies and unions including the Confederation of School Trusts (CST), the Institute of School Business Leadership (ISBL) and the Association of School and College Leaders, as well as several trust chief executives, in early January.
The group will aim to help the Department for Education understand which financial oversight requirements imposed on trusts by it and the Education Skills and Funding Agency (ESFA) are either hard to understand or difficult to comply with.
The task force has been launched to help inform work being carried out by ESFA reviewing the current financial practices and requirements of the Academy Trust Handbook, as well as its reporting and data provisions, Tes understands.
Hayley Dunn, business leadership specialist at ASCL, said that the role of finance professionals in all schools and trusts had been “burdensome for a sustained period of time due to workload pressures and exponential rises in costs”, and that finding ways to “improve and simplify the financial oversight of academies would be welcome”.
“The regulation and oversight of public funds must be proportionate and appropriate. Financial compliance rates are high and errors low, and academy leaders take extremely seriously their duty to use public money in a responsible manner,” she added.
Leora Cruddas, chief executive of CST, said the organisation supported the ESFA’s ambition to make the agency deliver “certainty, simplicity and support”.
“We do however think that the work on simplification must be aligned with a broad regulatory approach,” she said. “CST has long argued for a regulatory strategy and single, risk-based regulatory approach that is proportionate to the problem it is intended to address.”
Earlier this year, the DfE launched a review into how trusts are held to account and it’s understood that the new task force will feed into this work.
The group was formed after the publication of the Schools White Paper earlier this year, which stated that the government must “shape a regulatory approach that is fit for a fully trust-led system”.
The legislation that followed this White Paper - the Schools Bill - has now been axed, although education secretary Gillian Keegan has said that the department “remains committed to the objectives” of the bill.
At the start of this term, many trust leaders expressed anger at having to produce budget returns without having sight of staff pay rises, with some then resubmitting again later.
