Council boss challenges DfE in free school chair controversy

Bradford Council’s executive member for schools, Ralph Berry, has challenged the Department for Education (DfE) to find a local authority which has allowed this to happen with one of its own schools following the controversy over the King Science Academy in the city.

The Yorkshire Post has exclusively revealed the DfE said it wrongly believed that Alan Lewis, a vice-chairman of the Conservative Party, had been the school’s chair for 12 months but then discovered this was not the case. The DfE’s latest statement says that there was no chairman in place at the scandal-hit free school from October 2011 to October 2012.

Mr Lewis has also said he was never the chairman, or had responsibility for the school’s financial management and governance. He is said to be the school’s executive patron and the academy has been built on his company’s land in a deal worth almost £6m over 20 years. Now Coun Berry is asking how the DfE could have been mistaken for so long.

He said: “We are constantly told that free schools are subject to greater scrutiny than local maintained schools but I challenge the DfE to find me an example like this among local authority schools. Are the DfE not in contact with free schools? Do they not correspond with the governing bodies? I also find it ironic that it is Bradford Council which has been asked to play a role in improving the school’s governance arrangements now.”

The free school has been in the headlines since a DfE investigation report – published in October last year after it was leaked to the media – found the school had submitted fabricated invoices to claim public money.

The DfE reported its findings to Action Fraud – a national fraud call handling centre – in April last year but the matter was not passed to police for criminal investigation for six months because Action Fraud wrongly classified it as being an information report. West Yorkshire Police is now investigating and has arrested and bailed the school’s principal Sajid Raza.

Responding to Coun Berry’s criticism for not knowing who the chair of governors was in the school’s first year, a DfE spokeswoman said: “As part of their funding agreement all free schools must notify the department of any changes in governance.

“The department were explicitly informed by email from the Kings Science Academy that Alan Lewis took over as chair from October 1, 2011. We learnt in October 2012 that we had been misinformed. This was looked at by the Education Funding Agency as part of their wider investigation into financial management and governance of the Kings Science Academy in December 2012 which confirmed that there had been no chair in place for the first year of the school’s operation.”

But a separate internal audit report, also published by the DfE, and dated May of last year suggests there was a chair of governors in place during this time.

A spokesman for Mr Lewis’ firm, the Hartley Group, reiterated he was never the chair of governors or was responsible for financial management, and added:” I can only presume erroneous references to Mr Lewis as chair originate from a historic error on the academy’s website which however was rectified immediately when it was brought to Mr Lewis’ attention.”