31 July 2018
The Department for Education (DfE) have published a document showing the cumulative reserves held by academy trusts at the end of the academic year 2016/17, comparing them to the previous year.
At the end of the academic year 2016/17:
- 91.6% of trusts had a cumulative surplus and 2.3% had a zero balance. The percentage of trusts with either a surplus or zero funds balance has therefore reduced slightly by 0.6% percentage points compared to 2015/16.
- 6.1% of trusts had a cumulative deficit, a 0.6% rise in percentage points from 2015/16.
- 94.5% of academies were in trusts that had a cumulative surplus with 1.2% in a trust with a zero balance.
- 4.3% of academies were in trusts that had a cumulative deficit.
- The total net financial position of all academy trusts was a cumulative surplus of £2.4 billion.
- The average reserves in trusts was £791,000.
The data has been collected from 3,018 trusts, containing a total of 7,015 individual academies.
The document comments on the Local Authority data published by the DfE last year which revealed that 9.1% of maintained schools had a cumulative deficit as the end of 2016/17. Given the negative press that often surrounds the academy sector it is interesting to note this fairly wide differential which makes it clear that academies are actually faring better financially than maintained schools.
The full document can be found here.
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