Schools from Yorkshire invested millions of pounds into a multi-academy trust funding that just recently declared for bankruptcy.
A bad investment made by Yorkshire schools
Just recently, a group of schools from a small county in Northern England made a very bad decision that they will continue to regret for quite a long time. Yorkshire schools made a multi-million investment in a multi-academy trust fund, which just recently declared for bankruptcy.
The whole education community in Yorkshire was devasted upon hearing the disappearance of millions of funding invested by the schools in the said trust fund.
School funds were managed by Wakefield City Academies (WCAT) with 21 schools under its patronage. WCAT was accused of asset-stripping after moving its school’s funds to a centralized account. The school commissioner confirmed that the invested funds were liquidated and closed last October 24 of this year.
Vick Beer, school commissioner for Lancashire and West Yorkshire stated in an interview;
I advised that all remaining funds at the point of closure be accounted for, minus the pension liabilities and outstanding invoices.
Unfortunately, after the liquidation, there were no enough funds left to distribute among members of the WCAT.
In response to Mrs. Beer’s statement, Mr. John Trickett a Labour politician said;
This news is extremely stressful for the schools which are part of WCAT that handed out huge amounts of money with the expectation of gaining profit through interest thinking what they did was an investment.
Financial Issues left unnoticed
Trickett also cited the involvement of accountancy firm “Deloitte” which was paid a handsome amount of almost $260 million to wind up WCAT.
It was like sending 43 students into school for a year all expenses paid. The average cost for sending a student to school is around $6060, multiplied by 43 will be the amount paid to “Deloitte” to wrap up the WCAT trust funding.
This wasn’t the first time that WCAT dodged a financial scandal, way back in October of 2016, the trust fund released a whopping $570 million to IT and clerking companies owned by former chief executive Mike Ramsay.
The Labour politician called the attention of the DFE to clarify the total cos of WCAT’s bankruptcy. He wanted a detailed report on the liquidation and financial transactions that WCAT was involved in. This way, we can trace the real cause of the downfall of the trust fund and as well as if there are people who took advantage of the money.
Yorkshire deserves to know what went wrong with WCAT, the answer should be given out, no hiding in commercial confidentiality. In a small town like ours, every penny counts, especially if it is intended for the welfare of the citizens.
Featured image by itv
