Recommendation 23

The Department told us that many trusts actively explain their use of budgets to parents. We asked the Department whether the current arrangements should be more transparent, so that parents can see what academies are spending per-pupil. The Department told us that its online benchmarking service allowed viewers to identify the level of expenditure incurred by an academy and the number of pupils at a school.62 As we have reported previously, however, the online benchmarking tool combines income figures from a number of different funding streams, and it is therefore not possible to see whether a school is receiving the minimum per-pupil funding under the NFF specifically.63 The Department confirmed that the ability to pool GAG funding meant that it cannot guarantee that every school will be getting exactly the same amount. Whilst this may 55 Qq 106–107 56 Qq 108–110 57 Q111 58 Treasury Minute, Government response to the Committee of Public Accounts Seventy-Third Report: Academy accounts and performance for the year ended 31 August 2017, April 2019, para 2.2 59 HC Committee of Public Accounts, Academy accounts and performance, Seventy-Third Report of Session 2017–19, HC 1597, January 2019, para 2 60 C&AG’s report, School funding in England, HC 300, July 2021, paras 2.15, 2.29 61 Treasury Minute, Government response to the Committee of Public Accounts Twenty-First Report: School Funding, December 2021, para 3–3.3 62 Qq 23–4 63 HC Committee of Public Accounts, School Funding: Twenty-First Report of Session 2021–22, HC 183, October 2021, para 16 Academies Sector Annual Report and Accounts 2019/20 17 allow a MAT to move funds to where it considers it is needed most, as we have found previously, it means there is no way to identify if every pupil in a MAT has received the government’s guaranteed minimum level of funding.64 Whole of Government Accounts