The Department for Education has named 23 academy trusts that failed to issue financial returns on time before the Covid crisis.

The government has a policy of naming school trusts that fail to meet two or more deadlines for providing the government with information about their financial situation.

The DfE said that submitting financial returns on time is an essential requirement of the academies handbook and is necessary to allow the government to have financial oversight of the academies sector.

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The 23 trusts that are named today all failed to provide the Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) with two or more financial returns that were due before the Covid-19 pandemic.

Oversight of academy finances

Trusts were supposed to submit financial statements to the department by the end of the calendar year; provide information through the ESFA’s “land and buildings collection tool” by 4 November last year; and provide an accounts return by 20 January of this year.

The DfE said it has not named late returners of the budget forecast return three-year forms because these will have been impacted by Covid-19.

Tes revealed earlier this year that more than 60 academy trusts had missed an official deadline to file their latest financial statements.

This came more than two years after the ESFA announced that it was taking a “firmer stance” on academy trusts that submit their financial information late.

In a statement today, the DfE said: “Submitting financial returns on time is an essential requirement of the Academies Financial Handbook.

“Compliance with the financial accountability and assurance framework allows ESFA to oversee the financial health of the sector and provide assurance to Parliament and the public about how public money is spent.

“The vast majority of academy trusts submitted their financial returns on time, but in order to improve compliance with the submission deadlines, and in fairness to the trusts who do submit their returns on time, we have a policy of naming those academy trusts who were late with two or more of the above deadlines.”

The list of trusts named by the Department for Education is below.