Academy contribution
The Agora Learning Partnership operates a central fund in order to provide a range of shared services and support the Trust Office and its central functions.
For details of the services provided please email info@agoralearning.co.uk for a copy of our Corporate Support brochure.
The Trust endeavours to keep central overheads as low as possible and to secure favourable rates through its negotiating power and expertise for services that may also be available in addition to those provided by the Corporate Support Fee, should schools wish to take advantage of those rates.
Due diligence
The Trust draws upon and commissions staff with expertise and current knowledge to conduct a range of due diligence work to assess individual schools prior to their admission, including work on education/curriculum performance, financial projections, the status of the school’s property and assets, the position of the school’s LGPS funding, and the accuracy of pupil number projections. Based upon the results of this work, the financial sustainability of applicant schools will be assessed against a scorecard. This scorecard will examine 3-5 year financial projections, sensitivities around pupil numbers, ratios around salary spend on teaching staff, TAs and support staff, and forecast requirements for capital funding.
Those schools that meet the requirements of the due diligence test will be admitted to the Trust, while further work will be undertaken with those that do not meet the required standards. This work will focus on the development of an action plan to improve the financial status of the applicant school, to offset risks and to revise financial projections.
It is the intention that, rather than reject from admission to the Trust any maintained school on the grounds of its financial position, the Agora Learning Partnership will support all schools in meeting the financial criteria required prior to becoming an academy within the Trust.
Applicant schools will be welcome to join the Trust if agreement can be reached with their local governing body and headteacher to commit to delivering the action plan set out by the Trust, to ensure that the school is financially sustainable. We are confident that, from our experience of this work with schools in Hertfordshire, action plans can be put in place to turn around the financial fortunes of schools in the most challenging circumstances
Shared services
As the number of academies in the Trust increases, and the income of the Trust increases, opportunities will be taken to review the provision of shared services and of back-office services in particular. These reviews will be performed in the context of the Trust’s need to ensure proper use of public funds, and the need to deliver value for money with improved quality in service provision. It is anticipated that the Trust will invest in the provision of some additional central services as the Trust grows, to remove costs from individual academies and provide more efficient and effective services shared across local small schools.