My article in Private Eye!

Published on Left Foot Forward 6 February 2014

Left Foot Forward gets an honourable mention in this week’s Private Eye for Annie Powell’s tireless campaign to save Sulivan Primary School.

You can read all of Annie’s pieces on Sulivan Primary School here:

The government’s free school programme just got sinister

Tory council to close award-winning school – so a free school can have its land

Scandal at Sulivan Primary: the plot thickens

Sulivan Primary: Hammersmith and Fulham Council leader responds

Sulivan Primary: Hammersmith and Fulham Council leader responds

First published on Left Foot Forward on 3 February 2014

Following the controversial decision to close top-performing Sulivan Primary School last month, I wrote about serious questions that two leading councillors had to answer about potential conflicts of interest in closing Sulivan.

One of those councillors is Nick Botterill, leader of the council.

Botterill is director of a company called Active Learning Childcare (‘ALC’) which runs a chain of nine private nurseries in London. The Fulham branch of ALC is a short walk away from Sulivan Primary – and Sulivan has an extremely popular nursery. In 2011 and 2012, the council had also twice refused Sulivan’s applications to expand its nursery.

Nick Botterill’s Reponse

Botterill has now responded. In relation to the council’s decision to refuse Sulivan’s extension applications in 2011 and 2012, he says that he had no role in or knowledge of either decision.

His response to the charge that he did not declare his business interest in closing Sulivan was, “I do not have any interest to declare in relation to Sulivan.” The reasons he gives for this are cited below in full:

“The Sulivan nursery school is within a maintained primary school and is not in any competition with the ALC [Active Learning Childcare] day nursery. This is because they both serve very different needs and different users/markets.  ALC, along with a number of other private providers in the borough, offers fee paying day care services for children aged 3 months and over, open for 51 weeks per year between 7.30am and 6.30pm and is typically used by parents as an alternative to a nanny or some other form of comprehensive child care.”  

Comparison of Sulivan’s nursery and ALC

Sulivan’s nursery has a mixture of full and part-time places for three and four-year olds which are all free of charge. At the moment, there are 21 full-time places and 10 part-time places. Full-time encompasses the hours from 9.05am to 3.25pm, 38 weeks a year. There are 29 children on the waiting list.

Sulivan is an exceptional, award-winning primary, with a very rare thing in London –beautiful grounds. There is an orchard, a large garden with a vegetable patch and a pond, all of which are incorporated into the children’s learning and play.

Now turning to ALC. In April 2013, the nursery had 99 spaces and 80 children on the roll: that figure may have since increased or decreased. The nursery is rated ‘Good’ by Ofsted with no outstanding features.

One of ALC’s selling points, which they include under the ‘Why we are different’ tab on their website, includes ‘garden play’ in ‘natural play environments.’

You can’t get more ‘natural’ play environments than Sulivan’s grounds. But, unlike Sulivan’s nursery, for ALC you have to pay; fees currently range from £67.76 to £103.30 per day depending on age and frequency of attendance.

It is certainly true that Sulivan does not provide the same set of services as ALC, but both provide childcare for three and four-years-olds.

It is important to note here ALC doesn’t just offer full-time places from 7.30am to 6.30pm – it also offers part-time spaces and half-day sessions.

There will be some parents who need their children looked after outside school hours and who want that care to be in one place – Sulivan is not a competitor to ALC in this regard.

However, for those parents who do not need childcare outside school hours for their three or four year olds but who do need some daytime care, Sulivan and ALC provide comparable services.

Yes, there will be some such parents who could never afford private nursery fees, but there is no reason why Sulivan wouldn’t also attract parents who could afford to pay and who would be prepared to do so for the right nursery, but who see no need to spend thousands of pounds a year if their child can attend a free nursery in an exceptional school with beautiful grounds. Such parents could well decide to move to ALC on Sulivan’s closure.

Similarly, parents who could afford to pay ALC’s fees and who need extended daytime childcare for some or all of the working week may still find it more appealing and cost-effective to send their child to Sulivan and have a child-minder or other form of childcare before and/or after nursery and, if necessary, in the school holidays. They too could switch.

Botterill writes that parents who choose ALC are “typically” those who want an alternative to a nanny or some other form of comprehensive childcare. However, without an excellent nursery nearby providing free childcare in school hours, there is a good chance that ALC would have a greater demand for the type of service provided by Sulivan.

Finally, both Sulivan and ALC provide assisted places – 15 hours a week free childcare – and, like all such providers, both are paid by the government for doing so.

If Sulivan closes, supply of assisted places in the borough will decrease because Sulivan’s pupils will be transferred to another school, New Kings, and the combined capacity of the two nurseries will be reduced by 20 per cent.

Definition of a market

The basis for Botterill’s claim that Sulivan is “not in any competition with ALC” is that Sulivan and ALC serve different markets.

The comparison above suggests that is not at all obvious. More rigorously we could consider the application of the test the Competition Commission uses in its definition of a market:

“The willingness of customers to switch to other products is a driving force of competition. In forming its views on market definition, the CC will therefore consider the degree of demand substitutability.”

The general test for demand substitutability is the following hypothetical test: if there was a ‘small but significant non-transitory increase in price’ (‘SSNIP’) in Product A, would consumers switch to product B? And would this result in a decrease in profit for the producers of product A? The increase in price considered for product A is typically 5 to 10 per cent.

When applying the SNIPP test to define a market, there is particular emphasis on whether the increase will cause some consumers to switch from product A to product B.

The Competition Commission also states that “other producers from which firms face competition need not be simply other commercial firms but might include, for example, government”.

Applying this test to Sulivan and ALC, we have to imagine the effects of ALC increasing its fees by between 5 and 10 percent. Would that result in some parents – now or in the future – switching from ALC to Sulivan’s nursery? For this we have to imagine that Sulivan’s nursery has capacity.

From the description of both nurseries’ services, I can see no reason why some parents would not switch to Sulivan in this scenario. But Botterill is certain that they wouldn’t.

I have asked him to explain the reasons for this certainty; so far I have received no response.

Another way of looking at whether ALC and Sulivan’s nursery are in the same market is to consider whether any of Sulivan’s parents, now or in future, would move their children to ALC if Sulivan closed or didn’t exist. The question of whether demand for ALC’s services would increase on Sulivan’s closure is particularly relevant when considering possible conflicts of interest.

Again, I can see no reason why some parents wouldn’t move their children to ALC in this scenario.

As Botterill did not declare his interest in ALC when voting to shut Sulivan, it is now incumbent on him to show that no Sulivan parents would move their children to ALC’s nursery, either to take advantage of assisted places or as fee-paying customers.

Scandal at Sulivan Primary: the plot thickens

First published on Left Foot Forward on 27 January 2014

Last week Hammersmith and Fulham Council voted to close award-winning Sulivan primary so that a free school can have its land.

Two leading councillors involved in that decision, Nick Botterill, leader of the Council, and Georgie Cooney, cabinet member for education, now have some serious questions to answer about personal interests they may have in closing Sulivan.

The first item on councillor Nick Botterill’s register of interests is a directorship at Active Learning Childcare, a company that runs a chain of nine nurseries in London. There’s also a little bioof him on the company’s website.

One of the nine Active Learning Childcare nurseries is in Fulham – a short walk away from Sulivan Primary. The premises for that nursery are also listed on Botterill’s register of interests as being owned by Active Learning Childcare. A land registry search shows that the registered owner of the property is Active Learning Childcare (Guernsey) Limited, and that the property was bought in 2006 from ‘the Mayor and Burgesses of the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham’ (Hammersmith and Fulham Council).

Sulivan has a very popular nursery, with 29 children currently on the waiting list. Three and four-year-olds who go to Active Learning Centre nursery, like those who go to Sulivan’s nursery, are entitled to 15 hours free early child care. That money is paid by the government to the nursery provider.

Sulivan, therefore, is a direct competitor to Active Learning Childcare, the Fulham branch of which stands to gain from Sulivan’s closure.

I’ve looked through all published Council minutes relating to Sulivan and, as far as I can see, Botterill has never disclosed his financial interest in relation to the Sulivan decision.

In recent years, Hammersmith and Fulham Council have twice refused to allow Sulivan to expand their nursery intake to match the one and a half form entries in other years (it only has 26 full time equivalent places at the moment).

As Sulivan’s head teacher, Wendy Aldridge, and many others have pointed out, this is a very strange decision for a Council which claims to have long-held concerns about Sulivan being under-subscribed (for the record, Sulivan is actually now 89 per cent full overall and 100 per cent full in nursery and reception which is better than many other primaries in the borough, but that hasn’t stopped the Council from giving under-subscription as the sole reason for closing the school).

If the Council really wanted to help Sulivan attain 100 per cent capacity, it would have granted the nursery extension, because parents whose children attend a nursery at a primary school are more likely to then choose that school for their child.

The refusal to allow Sulivan to expand its nursery provision would have benefitted Active Learning Childcare in two ways: it limited the direct competition posed by Sulivan’s nursery and it helped to provide the pretext for closing Sulivan and replacing it with a secondary school, eliminating that competition altogether.

And now to Councillor Georgie Cooney. When the Council voted last week to close Sulivan, she confirmed that she is good friends with one of the founders of Fulham Boys School, the free school set to take over Sulivan’s site following its closure.

The founder in question is one Arabella Northey. At Monday’s meeting Councillor Cooney said that she was only disclosing her friendship in the interests of transparency and that it was not a material conflict of interest. She did not recuse herself from the meeting and she took part in the vote to close Sulivan Primary.

Cooney’s defence was that, as cabinet member for education, she has “many friendships with people who work in the borough’s schools” and that her friendship with Northey had no bearing on her decision to close Sulivan.

But Cooney appears to be extremely good friends with Northey. A quick Google search shows that Northey joined Cooney for a 6-day-long charity walk in Santiago, Chile, in 2011, raising money for the Irish Cancer Charity in honour of Cooney’s father.

Cooney writes on the page that she is going on the trip with ‘Bella’ (Arabella) and two others, and Arabella Northey’s name appears on the justgiving page next to the following message: “Delighted to be sponsoring my walking companion, for your father anything is worth it.”

Is Cooney similarly close to anyone closely connected to Sulivan?

A site for the school she is founding is not the only way Northey will benefit from the closure of Sulivan. She too has interests in a private nursery, The Zebedee Nursery School, which is also very near to Sulivan Primary. A Companies House search shows that Arabella Northey was, at the time that company filings were last made, company secretary of Zebedee Nursery School Limited.

The decision to close Sulivan has been called before the Council’s Education Scrutiny Committee, which in itself is interesting because that committee has a Tory majority (maybe some Councillors are getting worried about May’s elections).

The scrutiny committee meeting has the power to call and question Councillors. This is the perfect opportunity for Botterill and Cooney to address what are, prima facie, deeply concerning conflicts of interest.

More on Sulivan school

———————————-Update- 20-01-14—————————————-

Nick Botterill, leader of Hammersmith and Fulham Council, has now responded to the article:

“The reason you have not found anything on our website is because I do not have any interest to declare in relation to Sulivan and New Kings schools.

“You will see that I have declared an interest in the Register of Interests, as I am a director of Active Learning Childcare (Guernsey) Limited (“ALC”), a company which employs c 300 people across 9 sites solely in the UK and also pays all its taxes in the UK. The Guernsey company registration is incidental and is a legacy issue resulting from a previous managing director’s particular circumstances.

“It is correct that ALC did buy a site from Hammersmith & Fulham council. I took no part in that sale or events leading up to that sale owing to the fact that the decision to sell the site was made in 2004 by the previous Labour administration and I was not involved in the decision making process in any way.

“Having made an enquiry, I am advised by council officers that it is correct that Hammersmith & Fulham council twice refused Sulivan’s application to expand their nursery intake and that this was for reasons to do with capital as opposed to revenue funding. These were officer decisions or recommendations which were rejected based on service provision grounds of what was feasible within the government funding available. I have been sent a brief summary from officers in relation to the two bids by Sulivan in which the officers report stated that “the 2011 bid was not in line with strategy, and the 2012 bid was not considered as Early Years Provision was not/and is not considered a major challenge for the borough currently, priority of decision was around expansion of statutory school ages.”  For the avoidance of doubt, initially as the council deputy leader and later from May 2012 as leader, I was not a party to these decisions nor did I even have any knowledge of them at the time they were taken.

“The Sulivan nursery school is within a maintained primary school and is not in any competition with the ALC day nursery. This is because they both serve very different needs and different users/markets. ALC, along with a number of other private providers in the borough, offers fee paying day care services for children aged 3 months and over, open for 51 weeks per year between 7.30am and 6.30pm and is typically used by parents as an alternative to a nanny or some other form of comprehensive child care.  

“A further issue you have not asked about but which I would like to make reference to is the issue of nursery funding to 3+ year olds. The Council, like all the others in England, does allocate revenue funding to private nurseries for free child care but the Council (or its members) do not have any discretion in this which is done on the basis of central government directive. The funding is simply passed on from government to nurseries by the Council. I have sought legal advice in the past and was advised that these circumstances meant there was no interest for me to declare.

“There is also a pot of capital funding available to private, voluntary and independent day nurseries which is separate from the maintained schools’ pot (which includes nursery schools and nursery classes in primary schools) and they do not overlap. I can confirm that ALC has not applied for, nor received any capital funding. Also, ALC  does not currently participate in the 2 year olds funding programmes.

“Your suggestion that I have ‘some serious questions to answer about personal interests’ in the collective decision to merge Sulivan and New Kings schools is quite outrageous. This is the second attempt to imply there have somehow been wrongdoings of cabinet members with respect to this decision. As far as Cllr Cooney is concerned it is not my place to respond on her behalf save to say that I would like to point out that Cllr Cooney also has explained her position and there is no wrongdoing there either.”

Tory Council to close award-winning primary – so a free school can have its land

First published on Left Foot Forward on 21 January 2014

Last night, the Tory Council in the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham took one of the most unfair and destructive decisions a council can make: it ordered the closure of a top-performing, inclusive, popular state school which serves some of the most disadvantaged children in the borough.

Why? So that a Church of England secondary free school for boys can take its land.

The primary school in question isSulivan Primary, a local authority school which this year ranked 233rd out of 15,000 primaries in England and Wales in terms of pupil progress, the main measure of school performance.

In the most recent SAT exams Sulivan’s pupils, a large proportion of whom come from deprived backgrounds, performed well above the national average, with 83 per cent achieving the benchmark of level 4 or above in reading, writing and maths compared with 75 per cent nationally. 

This phenomenal success earned the school a letter of congratulations from schools minister David Laws just last month, praising the “excellent performance” of pupils, “particularly…disadvantaged pupils”. Earlier in 2013 Sulivan was also awarded membership of the Mayor of London’s Gold Club, “an annual scheme which celebrates and shares exceptional practice in London’s primary and secondary schools”.

When news broke last year that the school might close, I wrote a piece which gives the full background to the story. In summary, Hammersmith and Fulham Council have always denied that they are closing Sulivan to give the land to Fulham Boys School, the free school which currently lacks a permanent site.

They say that they made the proposal because Sulivan and a neighbouring primary, New Kings (a good but unexceptional school), are under-subscribed and therefore not ‘schools of choice.’

This, they claim, is the reason for the proposed ‘amalgamation’ of the two schools which would reduce their combined intake by 20 per cent. The fact that Sulivan pupils would be transferred to New Kings thus ‘freeing up’ Sulivan’s land for the free school was merely an ‘added benefit’ of the proposal; the Council has repeatedly insisted that this was not a factor in the decision.

The problem for the Tory Council is that the only justification they give for closing Sulivan is factually incorrect. Sulivan is oversubscribed at nursery and reception stage, with the longest waiting list in the borough for nursery places; it has very much become a ‘school of choice’. The consultation form and the information on the Council’s websites use outdated roll figures, showing every year to be under-subscribed.

Despite knowing about this error since July 2013, it was never corrected. It is very likely that Sulivan would soon have been full, if not over-subscribed, in every year group. By contrast, the free school programme has been dogged by large numbers of unfilled places.

Given that the borough already has enough secondary school places (but not primary), this problem seems likely to continue.

Closure of Sulivan and amalgamation on New King’s site will mean that Sulivan’s outstanding head teacher, Ms Aldridge, will lose her job, while the current New Kings’ head will lead the enlarged school. How painfully ironic, then, that David Laws, in his congratulatory letter to Ms Aldridge, wrote:

“We…need excellent school leaders, who have improved outcomes for their disadvantaged pupils in particular, to support other schools. You may of course already be doing this…”

If concern over unfilled places was really the only reason for this amalgamation proposal, you would think that Hammersmith and Fulham Council would at the very least have considered expanding Sulivan to accommodate New Kings’ pupils under the exceptional leadership of Ms Aldridge. But no.

The reason, of course, is that this whole exercise is being carried out to make room for the secondary free school and the Council has been extremely poor at disguising their true motivation.

Last year Sulivan wrote to the Council, putting forward the possibility of amalgamation on their site, not New Kings. In its reply, the Council said that Alex Wade, founder of the Fulham Boys School

“did not see your [Sulivan’s] alternative plan as workable, and that the clear preference of the Fulham Boys School’s governors and head teacher would be for a new secondary on the larger and more suitable Sulivan site”.

Further, if the proposal was only about amalgamation, the Council shouldn’t have counted consultation responses which supported the proposal solely because it would free up the site for Fulham Boys.

Not only did the Council include 970 of these responses, it disregarded two ringbinders full of letters and petitions opposing the proposal, together with local schools’ petitions and the wider ranging 38 degrees petition, both of which had thousands of signatures.

The reason? They were not submitted “online or on the blue pro-forma”. Nowhere did the consultation say that responses would only be considered if they were submitted in a prescribed form.

Even after rigging the consultation results, there were still far more responses opposed to the proposal. So the Council decided to exclude responses from residents, staff and others, focussing solely on parents. This meant that marginally more respondents in this rigged count were in favour of the proposal.

However, as Sulivan’s excellent submission shows, when you discount those responses unlawfully included, a large majority of parents oppose the plans. And this is not even counting the contents of the ringbinders.

This sorry saga gets worse when you consider the broken promises and hypocrisy of the Conservatives, and the role Michael Gove played in facilitating the closure of Sulivan.

One of the Tories’ main manifesto promises, which remains unimplemented and has been largely forgotten, was to “give parents the power to save local schools threatened by closure, allowing communities the chance to take over and run good small schools”.

The decision to close Sulivan does everything that Tories say they oppose when it comes to education – local government stifling innovation and excellence (or actively killing it in this case), meddling in local affairs and ignoring the wishes of parents and local residents.

The machinations involved in obtaining a site for a free school have undermined all the principles that were meant to inspire the free school movement in the first place

And there’s a final bitter and ironic twist to this tale.

To avoid the ‘dead hand of local government’, Sulivan applied for academy status when it first learnt that it was under threat of closure. Once an academy, the Council couldn’t have touched the school.

Michael Gove has the final say over whether schools are allowed to convert to academy status. Sulivan met all the criteria for conversion, but according to a response I received from a DfE official:

“The Department considered the academy application and decided to defer considering whether to issue an Academy Order until a decision on the amalgamation has been taken.”

In other words, there was nothing in law to prevent Gove from granting the order which would have saved Sulivan, but he chose to allow local government to close one of the best schools in the country.

Can you imagine what he would have done, and said, if Hammersmith and Fulham were a Labour Council?

Never again can Gove say that he champions excellence in the face of destructive local government.

This might not be the end for Sulivan. It seems likely that the consultation process was legally flawed, which would open it up to judicial review. Watch this space.

Qualified teachers: the Labour policy that makes Tories unfathomably angry

First published on Left Foot Forward on 9 January 2014

You wouldn’t think that a policy requiring all teachers to obtain qualified teacher status(QTS) would be particularly controversial.

Almost all other professionals in both the public and private sectors must demonstrate that they have reached a required standard by obtaining an industry-specific qualification, and top-performing education systems globally such as those in South Korea, Singapore and Finland require teachers to obtain a teaching qualification.

But for some reason, Labour’s policy makes Tory MPs very angry indeed.

Background to the debate

State schools have long been able to employ unqualified teachers, however there used to be a requirement that such teachers work towards and attain QTS. On the day of the London 2012 Opening Ceremony, the Department for Education quietly removed that requirement in respect of academies and free schools.

Labour would reverse this measure in order to uphold minimum standards in state schools. QTS is a way of ensuring that all teachers have undergone appropriate training and have a set of core skills and knowledge.

This includes, for example, knowledge of different teaching methods; an understanding of how children learn and develop at different ages; knowledge of how to teach children with special educational needs; behaviour management techniques, and knowledge of the legal requirements for keeping children safe.

Routes to gaining QTS range from a PGCE to on-the-job training programmes such as Teach First and School-Centred Initial Teacher Training, where teachers are mentored and trained en route to QTS.

These are the main Tory arguments against requiring QTS:

1. Teachers working without QTS will lose their jobs

“… if the Labour policy is enacted…there are people currently teaching in the state sector in academies and free schools who will lose their jobs”

- Michael Gove

Not true. Labour have said repeatedly that teachers without QTS not already working towards obtaining it would be given every opportunity to do so. There would be no mass sacking of teachers without QTS. As shadow schools minister Kevin Brennan put it, “without giving anyone the sack, we would require all teachers to achieve QTS in a reasonable time, and unlike this government, we would negotiate and consult”.

2. Excellent teachers will leave state education rather than work towards QTS

“Under the Opposition’s policy, if those people do not put themselves through the many hours required to pass QTS, they will be sacked.”

“To maintain their living, these teachers will be sent to the independent sector.”

- Graham Stuart MP, chair of the Education Select Committee

Leaving aside the fact that many teachers have a moral commitment to working within the state sector, this fails to recognise that QTS has significant financial and practical value. QTS allows teachers to work in any state school, giving them far more options when looking to move schools and/or to progress their career (it is also not the case that private schools pay more than state schools – some do, some pay less).

By reinstating the position that all state school teachers must have or attain QTS, Labour’s proposal would further increase the value of QTS.

Further, having QTS is never going to harm a teacher’s chance of success in the job market but not having it could well do, as some head teachers will have a preference for candidates with QTS even if it is not a statutory requirement. Sir Michael Wilshaw, for example, chief inspector for Schools and former head teacher, told the Education Select Committee that “I would expect all the teachers in my school to have qualified teacher status.”

Why would committed teachers turn down the chance to make themselves more employable?

And there’s the final point that working towards QTS will benefit many teachers. There may be a small minority of experienced teachers for whom the training is unnecessary, but there is already an assessment-only route for them. Worst case scenario is that a small number will have to go through a box-ticking exercise. Worst case scenario of the Tories’ current policy? Teachers who do not know the very basics of how to teach.

3. QTS is unnecessary as head teachers are best placed to decide who to appoint

“As far as he [Tristram Hunt] and those on his Front Bench are concerned, the only way in which someone can be a good teacher is if a single piece of paper is conferred on them. We believe that the right person to decide who should teach in a school is the head teacher, not the bureaucrats.”

- Michael Gove

The minimum standards afforded by QTS are required because head teachers sometimes make very bad recruitment decisions. Just look at the Al-Madinah free school disaster, where Ofsted found that “Staff have been appointed to key roles for which they do not have the qualifications and experience. For example, most of the primary school teachers have not taught before…they have not had the training and support they need…”

What’s more, if Gove really believes that QTS isn’t necessary because head teachers are best placed to decide who to appoint, why has he only removed the requirement to obtain QTS from teachers in free schools and academies, and not local authority schools?

4. You don’t need QTS to be a great teacher, you only need to be clever and passionate about teaching

“He [Tristram Hunt] got to Cambridge with the help of men and women who did not have QTS, but who had a great degree and a passion for learning, and now he wants to deny that same opportunity to poor children.”

- Michael Gove

It is nonsense to suggest that being clever and passionate about teaching means that you don’t need to learn up-to-date research on different teaching methods, for example, or about how best to teach children with special educational needs, or how to deliver a class which meets the needs of all pupils.

This argument is also bizarrely inconsistent with the government’s approach to early years education. Education minister Liz Truss announced last year that the government was “improving qualifications” for child care professionals with a “new, more rigorous early years educator qualification.

5. Some unqualified teachers are excellent and some teachers with QTS are poor

“I have seen plenty of excellent teachers without PGCEs and some pretty poor ones with”

- Anne Main MP

This is almost too stupid a point to deal with, but Tristram Hunt’s rebuttal was pithy and enjoyable: “passing a driving test does not mean that all new drivers will avoid accidents, but this is not a reason to remove the requirement to pass a test.”

More questions for Michael Gove on free school fraud

Published on Left Foot Forward on 22 November 2013

It’s rare that a Westminster Hall debate makes waves within the Westminster bubble let alone outside it, but Tuesday’s debate on the oversight of free schools should prove to be an exception.

Shadow schools minister Kevin Brennan emphatically showedthat questions over the alleged fraud at Kings Science Academy and the Department for Education’s role in reporting it to the police have not been properly answered, either by Gove or his department.

Last month it emerged that the King’s Science Academy, a free school in Bradford, had ‘misused’ over £86,000 of its set-up grant. This misuse included spending on staff parties and meals, teachers’ rent and furniture, and paying the chair of governors £800 per meeting. The school then fabricated rent invoices for more than £10,000.

Things got murkier still when it emerged that the Department for Education (DfE) had known about this ‘financial mismanagement’ since April and had only released its internally-commissioned report late last month because a copy was leaked to Newsnight. Many then asked the obvious question – did the DfE report this to the police, as recommended by its own report?

Yes, said the DfE – on 25 April they had ‘informed the police who decided no further action was necessary’. But West Yorkshire police responded to this statement by saying that they had no record of the case being referred to them. It then emerged that, in line with protocol, the DfE had not referred the matter to West Yorkshire police but to Action Fraud. Action Fraud is a fraud and internet crime reporting centre run by the National Fraud Authority.

According to the Action Fraud website, when someone reports suspected fraud via the telephone or online reporting system, Action Fraud staff will refer the case to the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau as well as giving the informant a police crime reference number. If the Bureau then decides that the case should lead to a criminal investigation, the relevant local police authority will be informed.

So why didn’t the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau refer the case to West Yorkshire police? After all, it’s hard to think of a more obvious case of fraud than fabricated invoices (under the Fraud Act 2006, someone commits fraud by false representation when they dishonestly making a false representation with the intent to make a gain).

According to the DfE, the case was not pursued as a criminal investigation because of an administrative error by Action Fraud. As children’s minister Edward Timpson set out in a written answer on 11 November , ‘Action Fraud has apologised to the department for an administrative error on their part, which saw the case filed as an information report rather than a crime report.’

The matter has now finally been referred to West Yorkshire police who have brought three men in for questioning.

An administrative error. It’s certainly possible. But yesterday Kevin Brennan set out very clearly why that in itself is an unsatisfactory answer and why much more information is required from Michael Gove.

First, Brennan asked about the information given to Action Fraud in that phone call on 25 April. Did the DfE disclose all the available information about the suspected fraud? And what exactly was said? In particular, was anything said that might have led Action Fraud to believe that this was a report of information rather than a report of a suspected crime?

Brennan revealed that he had personally called Action Fraud the previous night and that calls to the hotline were recorded. This, he said, meant that ‘the minister should be able to obtain from the Home Office a recording of the telephone call…to Action Fraud in April to report the crime…We will be interested to hear that.’

Second, Brennan asked for the police crime reference number given to the DfE after it made its phone call on 25 April. It would be strange if the government didn’t have such a number (although having the number wouldn’t show that it had unambiguously reported the incident as a potential crime – it may be that every caller is given this number).

Brennan’s third point relates to the only other known contact made between the DfE and Action Fraud before the report was leaked. On 5 September, the department asked for an update on the case. As Edward Timpson said in another written answer, ‘the department contacted Action Fraud on 5 September and, in response, Action Fraud stated that the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau had assessed the case but determined that there was not enough information to progress the case further.’

This sounds like more than an administrative error, if it is correct that the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau assessed the information given and decided that it couldn’t progress the case. As Brennan asked, ‘how did Action Fraud obtain an update from the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau without the administrative error coming to light?’

We need to know more about who assesses whether a report should result in an investigation or simply be filed as information – Action Fraud or the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau?

Finally, when the DfE was told by Action Fraud in September that there was not enough information to progress the case, did ministers ensure that all the information relating to the alleged fraud had been given to Action Fraud? And did they check that that information had made its way to the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau?

That would be the obvious thing to check if, like the DfE, you were responsible for the oversight of free schools and you knew that there were very good reasons to suspect money allocated to a school has been spent fraudulently.

But as Brennan highlighted, Gove and his department cannot be reliable overseers of free schools when the education secretary is also a ‘propagandist for his free schools experimental policy’. This conflict of interest is why Gove (and not some junior minister) must answer these questions.

It is of course possible that the delay in investigating Kings Science Academy is entirely the fault of various fraud agencies, but at the moment that is far from clear.

What’s more, the DfE does not have an impeccable history when it comes to honesty – Gove has recently been caught retrospectively amending transcripts of his speeches online, for example.

Add to this the fact that the Kings Science Academy rents land from Alan Lewis, vice chairman of the Conservative Party, who is a patron of the school and stands to make almost £6m from the lease, and it becomes painfully clear that the onus is on Gove to show that his department acted appropriately in relation to this alleged crime.