£200k Headmaster, resigns over outrageous fraud

[Parenthood]

I have just read this article on the Daily Mail website www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2136392/206-000-superhead-quits-police-probe-lavish-spending-Academies-chief-hired-family-spent-millions-riding-centre-French-complex.html

He employed his wife, daughter and criminal son at the school, who it appears was a convicted sex offender!

The scale of the fraud is amazing and I suspect that this is just the tip of the iceberg, it looks like building contracts were being handed out to 'friends' and he clearly had a finance director set up as a fall guy.

This is all public money and I can't believe how much this school group were spending.

Big news here locally but only allegations currently. It will be interesting to see if it impacts on the academy scheme as a whole.

Mind you its nice to see the DM being "current" - this hit local headlines 2 weeks ago

Personally I think schools should be compelled to publish their full accounts on their internet sites and also include a full breakdown of expenditure by category - including a list of all individual transactions over say £1000. At my child's school every child in the year (240) was given a fountain pen and the bill for flowers on open day must run into thousands. I am sure there are better things to spend money on. I would suggest an AGM as well but I assume most people wouldn't bother to turn up.

Hampshire LEA schools do - its all on the HCC website.

Financial irregularities in a chain of academies in Lincolnshire, too. Then again there's a long, sad history nationwide of previous cases of corruption by both individuals and by groups from within councils. I don't think an particular type of school ownership or management is better or worse on this head.

Those are the same story ....

Oops! I don't click DM links, and had assumed they must be different as the thread was talking about one head/school, and BBC about a whole chain.

I hope the bit I posted about the long sad history of corruption in LEAs and other schools still makes sense!

There are similar allegations against a head in Exeter, too. Frighteningly similar. Employ,ent of spouse, children, misuse of expenses, trips, cars, ridiculously high salaries (50k more than the head at the top performing school in the city). www.thisisexeter.co.uk/156-000-Devon-headteacher-suspended-post/story-15943298-detail/story.html

chantico in the Lincolnshire instance they incorporated several schools over 4 different sites when it became an academy so in some ways it is a bit of a chain!

But the exeter school isn't an academy.

The Exeter school had applied to be the city's first academy. It was all going ahead until the local paper and the MP kicked up a fuss. There have been rumors for some time.....

Anyway - the Exeter case shows that this sort of thing can happen in non academies too, if the governors aren't on the ball.

Are there reasons why governors in an Academy Trust would be more lap-doggish than in a regular school?

YUP
because they do not have the LEA breathing down their necks
In bad LEAs that is a good thing.
In good LEAs it is a crying shame

In the Exeter case, the fact that the academy conversion process was halted (at the 11th hour) meant that the LEA could finally step in and start sorting things out (hopefully). If the academy concerns had gone through then the LEA could have done nothing. It's all about accountability, really. Academies can be run as fiefdoms. LEA controlled schools, not so much. It was difficult to see why the school in question wanted to be an academy other than for the power to control it's own budget with no accountability.

He allegedly paid his daughter £50k in consultancy fees. Why don't those people realise it will look bad? I suppose there's a tradition in a good few schools for a head master's wife to be employed in some capacity so may be it doesn't always matter - if you've forced the wife to live in the back of beyond in Scotland give up her career offering her the school secretarial job may be okay. MPs employ their wives as secretaries(and husbands). Ken L employed his wife.

This man was bigger than God in Lincoln. I was unable to get any of my children into this school and part of their appeal was that they did not have enough toilet facilities. They have been using this on appeal for over ten years. When the Lincolnshire Echo broke a story about buying the equestrian centre I wrote a comment that they should be investing in toilets instead so that more children from Lincoln could access this school. The comment I got back was that I was jealous!!