The boss of one of the UK’s largest academy trusts has defended a controversial turnaround plan that involved “swingeing cuts” and sparked rows with the major teaching unions.
Julian Drinkall, chief executive of Academies Enterprise Trust (AET), compared his intervention at the chain to “turning an iceberg-bound tanker”.
“We had to change course, and change it fast,” he said.
He was speaking as the trust today released a podcast charting the organisation’s turnaround over the past three years.
A statement from the trust accompanying the podcast said it showed how AET had been “on the brink of being broken up” and that “the new CEO made swingeing cuts initially to central costs amounting to £1.2 million and ultimately eliminating annual £8 million deficits”.
Some of the cuts made by the trust have been controversial, and AET last year faced a vote of no confidence from its staff.
The vote was in response to what unions claimed was a failure by AET to listen to staff over proposed cutbacks and restructuring.
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Mr Drinkall was brought in to run AET in 2016 after serious concerns were raised about the chain’s performance.
The turnaround at Academies Entreprise Trust
In 2019, school standards minister Nick Gibb said that the Education and Skills Funding Agency would provide up to £16.1 million in recoverable and non-recoverable deficit funding, in order to support the turnaround plan for AET, between the academic years 2017-18 and 2020-21.
Recent years have seen improvements in academic performance, including a 21 per cent improvement in key stage 2 results.
But the “Blueprint for Turnaround” has also proved extremely controversial, and AET was accused by school leaders of a “determination to rush changes through”.
Mr Drinkall said today: “The last three years have been extremely tough, but also extremely rewarding. Turning around an organisation like AET has been like turning an iceberg-bound tanker, that everyone else has all but given up on. We had to change course, and change it fast.
“Thankfully, the Department for Education was willing to give the organisation one last chance, and with improved results, better Ofsted gradings, good financial health and best-in-class governance at both school and trust level, I very much hope they have been vindicated in that.
“This has been a team effort through and through, and we wanted to share with the sector what we learned along the way. The Blueprint is not meant to signal that the job is done, far from it: we have recruited a highly talented team and have extremely high ambitions about where to take AET next.
“Today, AET is no longer the uncontrollable enfant terrible of the academies sector, but has become a net-giver to the sector and, over the coming years, will become an organisation of which we can all be proud.”
The podcast consists of a series of interviews between executive directors of the trust, and former national schools commissioner Sir David Carter, who recently joined AET as a trustee.
He said in the podcast that AET was “one of the best examples of a turnaround trust in the country”.
