- 1. Future Academies -Lord Nash and his wife Caroline, a former stockbroker,set it up in 2006. A chain of schools in Westminster. The trust’s
- has seven members, including Lord and Lady Nash. There are no parent trustees. The couple are also co-chairs of the board of governors of
Pimlico Academy, the chain’s flagship school.
Nash says that governance has to move beyond the representation of ‘particular interest groups’ – parents and teachers – in order to draw on the ‘widest possible pool of talent’. ‘Running a school is in many ways like running a business, so we need more business people coming forward to become governors.’
Lord Nash is a former chairman of the British Venture Capital Association, and a co-founder of Sovereign Capital, a private equity firm with interests in education and healthcare.
He was chairman of the private health and social care provider Care UK until 2010, when he joined the ‘red team’ of bankers and financiers helping Osborne to ‘think innovatively
He and his wife are substantial donors to the Conservatives, having given the party almost £300,000 between 2006 and 2013. In 2002,
Sovereign Capital acquired the Alpha Plus Group, ‘one of the UK’s most prestigious private education providers’. Over five years – the typical investment period of a private equity firm – they ‘increased pupil numbers by 44 per cent … and expanded pupil capacity by 1100 places’. Alpha Plus was sold to Delancey Real Estate Asset Management, in a deal reportedly worth around £120 million.
In 2008, Sovereign bought the World Class Learning Group, which runs international schools. In 2013, after ‘strong organic and acquisitive growth’, the WCL Group was sold to Nord Anglia Education (‘the exit returns a multiple of 5.3x money invested’).
Sovereign is currently investing in Paragon, a work-based training provider which will receive more than £17 million from the government’s Skills Funding Agency this year, and the Astrum Education Group, which runs a number of private sixth form colleges and has ‘many opportunities for growth’. As Michael Needley, the leader of Sovereign’s education team, apparently told an audience of investors last year, education is a ‘tremendous sector’ for high-return investment firms. ‘Let’s all go forth,’ he said. ‘Let’s all make hay.’
2. The Academies Enterprise Trust controls 67 schools. Its chairman of trustees is Jude Chin, who worked at KPMG for thirty years and has experience ‘advising on mergers, acquisitions and stock exchange listings’.
3. The chair of trustees of REAch2, which runs fifty schools, is a property developer, Peter Little.
4. The board of the Kemnal Academies Trust (41 schools) is led by John Atkins, a former college principal; but the vice-chair, Aruna Mehta, was once a managing director at JP Morgan Chase, and another trustee, Ian Armitage, is ‘an experienced venture capitalist and private equity investor’.
5. Ark, which runs 34 academies, has nine trustees; six of them are hedge fund managers, and none has any background in education (one of them, Lord Fink, was treasurer of the Conservative Party).
6. The Inspiration Trust runs 14 schools in Norfolk and Suffolk. Its board is led by Sir Theodore Agnew, another financier – his background is in ‘business process outsourcing’ and private equity – who was once head of the DfE’s Academies Board
GR Comment: Here’s some details about how hedge funds and Tory donors are set to profit from enforced academisation. How this is meant to benefit anyone beyond the directors of the MATs goodness knows, but that’s beside the point – rich men will become richer from public finances in return for providing nothing
MUMSNET – £1billion of title deeds for schools transferred to private companies
(83 Posts)
Before the election councils in England held the title deeds to schools and land valued at over £2.5 billion
But most people don’t know the very fine print of the academies bill means
1. The title deeds of the school and the land are transferred to a private company when the school becomes an academy
2. Michael Gove borrows £25,000 to pay the legal fees for the private companies to ensure the title deeds are transferred from the council (us taxpayers who paid to build the schools – to these private companies)
So far £1billion of title deeds for schools have been transferred from taxpayers – with Michael gove increasing the deficit by £481,750,000 – just for legal fees to transfer ownership of the schools from councils to private companies
So who has the title deeds now
Tory party member Philip Harris has his hands on £millions worth of title deeds. (Philip Harrismade donations to David Cameron as leader of the Conservative Party. He is considered to be one of his personal friends
Stanley Fink, another friend of Cameron has donated £2.62m to the Conservative party and David Cameron made Fink a Lord as soon as he came to power, and David Cameron has since made him Tory Party Treasurer and also handed his company £millions title deeds for schools
And today David Cameron has told us, as well as changing the law to transfer state assets to Tory party members (and I thought only China did that) – now he is changing the laws to allow them to start selling the Land
Just so you know – Stanley Fink – his company states in their accounts – any extra money – his company has a policy to transfer the funds to the Cayman Islands – via a stockbrokers that Stanley fink just happens to be on the board of
Now if I remember correctly the directors of southern cross did the same thing with care homes – selling them off – the money disappears offshore the company goes bust and pensioners left high and dry (with taxpayers expected to step in)
Well Cameron has just announced Tory party members who have their hands on the title deeds for our schools and the school land can start doing the same thing
And just to be clear – Stanley Fink’s company accounts for the schools also state – if Stanley fink’s company controlling the schools, the school budgets and the title deeds goes bust – Stanley Fink (Tory party treasurer on the Times rich list) only has to pay £10
Academies are not about education – they are about asset stripping and English parents and children, will find themselves, just like the pensioners and their families who were left without facilities due to the very rich directors of Southern Cross selling off the assets and disappearing in to the sunset
Do MIchael Gove and David Cameron shout from the rooftops that they are spending £25,000 per school to cover legal fees to transfer the title deeds to Tory Party members – no
I wonder why not – could it be they don’t want England’s parents to know the real intentions of the academies bill – it’s not about education – it is about asset stripping by Tory Party members – thanks to David Cameron, Michael Gove, every Tory MP and every LIberal MP
These are your schools – they do not belong to the Tory Party (well they do now)
Ask Michael Gove if your council gets the money when they sell off school land
Ask Stanley Fink (ARK SCHOOLS) – will this Tory Party treasurer be selling playing fields and as his accounts state, the money be transferred to the Cayman Islands (with his stockbrokers taking a cut along the way)
Serious questions – £1billion worth of assets stripped — £half a billion in legal fees to pay for it (which we the taxpayers must pay back as Gove had to borrow the money)
DisIdealistBlog
Comment@ disidealist: ”Perry Beeches joins the line of multi-academy trusts once highly-praised by Michael Gove which have since been criticised for their finances: Durand Academy Trust (head Sir Greg Martin was knighted for services to eduction), Barnfield Federation (headed by Sir Peter Birkett knighted for services to further education), Cuckoo Hall Academies Trust (head Patricia Sowter received a CBE for services to education; Gove was complicit in publicising Sowter’s misleading claim that she’d turned round Cuckoo Hall from Inadequate – not true, Cuckoo Hall had emerged from special measures in 1999, about three years before Sowter became head and the last Ofsted before she appeared said it was a good school).
Gove set these academies and their superheads as examples which others should follow. If the others do tread the same path then we can expect a lot more of these kinds of stories.”
Comment @ disidealist: ”Liam Nolan, Perry Beeches’ head, director and Accounting Officer, was on the BBC before the critical reports were in the public domain (at least they weren’t on the DfE website). He claimed the criticisms were just a little confusion about company and employment law – these used to deal with by the LA before Perry Beeches became a multi-academy trust. ‘I’m not a businessman; I’m a headteacher,’ he said.
But the two critical reports show things were rather more serious than Nolan claimed. It appears Nolan had enough business expertise to set up Liam Nolan Ltd, a private company with just one shareholder, which by a roundabout way provided Nolan with an extra income. See my blog here for further details:” http://www.localschoolsnetwork.org.uk/2016/03/damning-reports-show-problems-at-perry-beeches-were-more-than-a-little-confusion-over-the-law
The Mysterious Case of the Disappearing Schools. Or “Of Course It’s Bloody Privatisation”
ukgovernmentwatch 