Member

On my noble friend Lord Agnew’s amendment about auditing local authority schools, my MAT has specialised in taking over failing schools, mainly from local authorities. I have been struck in most cases by the very poor state of financial control of those schools. Generally, when a school is failing educationally, it is also failing financially, not just because of falling rolls but because of fairly poor financial control. An annual audit, as my noble friend has proposed, seems to be an absolute must in the case of local authority schools.