OUR schools shows how far things that were in the public realm have been handed over to private interests. And how those private interests have treated themselves very well indeed. 

Take the case of the Academies Enterprise Trust, where people who shouldn’t really be in charge of state schools have been handed enormous power. The results for pupils are mediocre, but for the top managers, they are pretty comfortable.

Under New Labour’s Academy programme, schools were handed to private — although not-for-profit — trusts. The Labour version just took selected schools out of local education authorities.

When the Tories took power, they super-charged this programme, and tried to make all schools into “academies.” They were pushed back from the “all academy” plan by protests.

But they’ve still pushed the change so hard that around six in 10 secondary schools are now academies.

Academies Enterprise Trust is the largest of the many “trusts” that has been handed formerly state-run schools. Academies Enterprise Trust runs 21 secondary schools, 32 primary schools and five “special” schools. It gets around £283 million a year from the taxpayer to run them.

To be clear, this is privatisation. Some try and argue it isn’t because academy trusts are charities. However, firstly, they are definitely private institutions.

Secondly, they act pretty much like other private firms delivering public services. Thanks to the quasi-market model and the mix of politically connected businessmen and religious hobbyists running the multi-academy trusts, they’ve done what other privatisers do. 

They have paid big salaries to their top staff. They have also made “related payments,” taking schools’ cash and passing it on to companies linked, or “related to” the management.

Academies Enterprise Trust’s “related payments” are not as big or alarming as some trusts. But even so, it paid £20,000 to privatiser Mitie for “services” when the Academies Enterprise Trust chairman, Jack Boyer, was also on the board of Mitie.

It also paid £4,000 to an “educational services” company called Optimus Education, when one of Optimus’s directors, Andrew Thraves, was also an Academies Enterprise Trust trustee.

Academies Enterprise Trust has also followed the private sector model of throwing money at its own bosses.

Julian Drinkall, the chief executive officer of Academies Enterprise Trust has the second-highest salary of any of the school multi-academy trust, with a £295,000 a year “remuneration package.” 

The government has been embarrassed about high pay for academy trust bosses, who are often paid much more than local authority education directors, and also paid more than the Prime Minister.

So it writes a letter to each academy trust where the chief exec is paid over £150,000. It’s a pathetic gesture, but they have written one of these complaining letters about Julian Drinkall’s salary. 

This is a mark of how deep the academy school privatisation cuts have gone.

The government, which entirely funds the Academies Enterprise Trust, is reduced to writing an ineffectual letter whining that it shouldn’t pay the boss so much. 

Drinkall is in charge of 58 state schools but comes from an entirely private school background. He was educated at Eton — a fact the Academies Enterprise Trust boasts about on its website.  

He came to the trust from his former job as chief executive of the Alpha Plus Group. This is a group of “independent” (or private) schools owned by Delancey, a property development business.

Tory donor Jamie Ritblat runs Delancey. His father, Tory donor John Ritblat, is the chairman of Alpha Plus Group. So Drinkall came to Academies Enterprise Trust from a Tory-connected private school business. 

It looks like crony capitalism, where politically connected bosses and businesses take over state assets. But does it matter?

Don’t these free-market wizards make the schools work well for the pupils? Well, not really.

Back in 2016, Education regulator Ofsted singled out Academies Enterprise Trust for criticism over its “mediocre” and “unacceptable” performance.

The trust has improved since then, but it is hard to see how it is any better than a regular, state-run education authority.

It has mixed — both good and bad — results. One of Academies Enterprise Trust’s  twenty-one secondary schools got an “outstanding” mark from Ofsted – the top mark possible.

Fourteen got a “good” mark. But one, the Bexleyheath Academy, was marked “inadequate” – the lowest possible grade. Five more were graded “requires improvement.” 

At the Bexleyheath Academy, a 1,500 pupil secondary in Kent, Ofsted said: “The school is failing to give its pupils an acceptable standard of education.

“Leaders are not demonstrating the capacity to improve the school.” 

The inspectors said: “Leaders do not support staff well enough. Staff morale is low. Pupils’ learning is disrupted by a high turnover of staff.”

This meant that “different groups of pupils, including the most able and those with special educational needs and/or disabilities (Send) make progress that is significantly below national averages”

At Clacton Coastal, a 1,300 pupil secondary in the Essex seaside town, Ofsted inspectors found the school had actually slipped backwards  from a “good” rating to “requires improvement.” 

The inspectors said: “Since the previous inspection, the impact of leaders’ and governors’ actions on improving pupils’ achievement has been limited.”

They added that “over time, the trust and governors have not made sure that the overall effectiveness of the school has remained good.” This meant “pupils’ progress and attainment are not good.”

Despite big salaries at the top, and mediocre performance at the bottom, this privatisation is likely to be very hard to unpick.

The Tories are of course very happy with the big-money-for-the -boss, poor-service-for-the-pupils model . But even Labour’s current policies only propose more parental control of existing academies and opening more local education authority schools.

The party hasn’t proposed bringing all the academies back “in-house.”

Solomon Hughes appears in the Star every Friday. You can follow him on Twitter via: @SolHughesWriter.