Academy trusts are looking to entice schools to join them by stumping up the £25,000 cost of conversion in a move some have described as offering “golden hellos”.
The Labour government will scrap £25,000 grants to aid schools convert to academy status in the new year.
Now one trust looking to more than double in size has revealed it will set aside £50,000 to ease the way for schools to join its ranks.
Another has vowed to split costs to ensure the lack of a grant does not become a “barrier” to growth.
But Dan Morrow, a former chief executive of Dartmoor Multi-Academy Trust, warned of “unintended consequences” that could lead to payments becoming “a factor in decision-making when it shouldn’t really be”.
“We need a refinement of the due diligence process, conversion process and the way schools join trusts, so we don’t end up in a situation whereby the ability of a multi-academy trust to pay this £25,000 becomes an incentive,” he said.
Voluntary converters can get “up to £25,000 to spend on the process” of becoming an academy. But the final round of applications will close next week. Trust capacity and growth funding has also been scrapped.
Trusts set money aside
LET Education Trust, based in Lancashire, has recently offered to dip into its reserves to pay for a school’s conversion during discussions with their governors.
It will set aside about £50,000 from next September to smooth the way for up to two schools to join a year, having set itself the target of growing from four to ten schools in five years.
Chief executive Steve Campbell said: “It could be seen as an incentive to join the trust.” But he didn’t view it as a golden hello, “as it’s doing the right thing for the right school to join the right trust”.
He added: “If they’re keen to join us, we wouldn’t want them put off by the fact the conversion grant is not available. We don’t even discuss with them ‘you’re going to have to find £X to do this’, we’ll just say ‘if you’re happy to join us, then we’ll cover it’.”
‘Splitting costs’
The Link Education Trust set aside £30,000 in-year for conversion costs.
Chris Moore, its chief executive, stressed he was “still looking for a joining school to carry the burden of the financial cost of conversion”.
But the trust “could assist that in part or in full if it came to the point where it was a blocker”.
In Yorkshire, the Bradford Diocesan Academies Trust has been “splitting costs” with standalones looking to join it as they “were ineligible for the [conversion] grant”. It has now started “looking to adopt this approach more widely for any school joining us”.
A spokesperson for the multi-academy trust said prospective academies convert “to benefit from the collaboration, support and expertise of a family of schools”.
The removal of the grant “could be a barrier to this happening”, particularly for those needing “significant” improvement or “financial transformation”.
Jeff Marshall, an academy conversion consultant, believes the moves “show an altruistic mindset” from multi-academy trusts, if it means “a school can end up in the right trust”.
He said two chief executives doing it have referred to the practice as a “golden hello” in private.
Moore said he believed that some larger, better-off trusts would “be able to advertise ‘all fees will be paid’” on their websites, adding: “To me, that is a very shortsighted reason for a school to join a trust. When you’re signing for 125 years, a very small golden hello shouldn’t make a difference.”
