Foreword by Baroness Barran

Foreword by Baroness Barran, Minister for the School System and Student Finance.

Twenty years ago, the first academy schools opened. Since then, the sector has grown in size, in variety, and maturity.

My ambition is to ensure that all schools continue to provide the very best educational experience for our young people. For that to happen, given the department’s role as regulator of academy trusts we must think carefully about achieving the right balance of support, autonomy and oversight.

The academy trust handbook, has played a vital role over the years in delivering clarity about the oversight framework that applies to academy trusts, helping us all provide assurance that public money is spent well. Trustees continue to take on very significant responsibilities and this is unchanged by this handbook.

In December I invited representatives of the sector, including CEOs, CFOs, and sector representative bodies, to feed back to us on where the department’s oversight framework could be improved, simplified, or streamlined, and whether the way in which we communicate requirements could be clearer. While we remain focused on our responsibilities to Parliament, the taxpayer, and the public, we have been keen to listen to your views and I am grateful to everyone who has spoken to me and to ESFA and DfE colleagues in the last year with suggested areas for improvement.

As a result, this year’s handbook is a simpler, shorter and more sharply focussed document than before. For example, we are making changes to the approval level for related party transactions, reflecting a more balanced approach in this area; we have simplified how we describe some aspects of trust governance; and we have more clearly expressed how internal scrutiny can best be applied.

Having said that, we have also reflected on whether we need to strengthen messages in a small number of areas. Most notably, the health and safety of our children and of everyone in the sector remains paramount, and for this reason the academy trust handbook contains additional content about the safety and management of your school estate. I appreciate it is important to you to understand the risks associated with your buildings and to use the resources available intelligently to minimise those risks. I also realise that it is a risk we share with you.

The handbook has always sought to be the product of a collaborative relationship with the sector, and we are grateful to everyone, including our academy working groups and steering group, who have supported us to get to this point. We will continue to improve the handbook and the oversight framework as a whole and continue to welcome feedback and suggestions which we will review carefully for next year and beyond.