Oral Answers to Questions

Mike Kane Excerpts

Monday 11th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Nick Gibb]

Yes, of course; I will be delighted to meet my hon. Friend to try to resolve that impasse. We are spending record amounts of capital on our school system: £23 billion in this period.

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

I am confused. In 2015 the Education Funding Agency conducted a financial management and governance review of the failed Wakefield City Academies Trust, but the Department refused to publish it, placing the trust’s commercial interests above the interests of the 8,500 pupils. So can the Minister answer the question of my hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh): how many more MATs are in peril on his watch?

[Nick Gibb]

As I said earlier, 98% of academy trust accounts for 2015-16 got a clean bill of health. We take the financial probity of the academy system very seriously. All academies have to publish audited financial accounts, which maintained local authority schools do not. The fact that far fewer schools today are rated as inadequate than in 2010 is a tribute to the structural reforms and the academies programme. Currently, 450,000 pupils are in sponsored academies rated as good or outstanding. Under the watch of the hon. Gentleman’s party these schools were typically underperforming, before we turned them into sponsored academies.