Trojan horse school accused of squandering money

A Trust behind three of Birmingham’s Trojan Horse-linked schools has been accused of squandering £27,000 of cash meant for disadvantaged pupils on a public relations campaign.

The Education Funding Agency investigated allegations Park View Educational Trust handed over the cash out of pupil premium funding - which is supposed to be spent on under-privileged children.

The EFA probe also looked at whether pupil premium money was used to fund a staff trip to the House of Commons, but said a lack of accounts made it impossible to verify either those allegations or the PR campaign claims.

But the investigators said £27,000 had been paid to the unnamed public relations company “without EFA authorisation” and formed part of £70,000 worth of “financial irregularities” authorised by the Trust between April 2012 and May last year.

The probe predominantly involved cash spent on Park View School in Alum Rock, which was placed in special measures last April following allegations of a plot by hardline Muslims to take control of the governing bodies of some Birmingham schools.

The agency investigated 20 allegations of financial impropriety and also discovered a staff member had been overpaid by GBP4,400 - money the unidentified individual has now been ordered to pay back.

The Trust was also accused of paying one employee, again unnamed, a staggering GBP13,000 in overtime, equivalent to a quarter of their annual salary.

The EFA has now made a series of recommendations to the Trust and has ordered it to complete a plan of action to address problems, particularly with the documentation of pupil premium expenditure, overtime payments and recruitment policies.

The Trust is now led by new trustees, who took over last July, and has a new accountancy team that are not implicated in the failings detailed in the report.