Deadline: 30-Sep-21
The Department for Education (DfE) is inviting application for the 2021-22 Trust Capacity Fund (TCaF) to help schools and trusts.
The Trust Capacity Fund particular focus on supporting strong trusts, and strong schools forming trusts, to take on underperforming schools in areas of higher need.
This supports the government’s vision for every school to be part of a family of schools in strong academy trusts, so that every child can benefit from the high-quality education they can provide.
Type of Growth
The following types of growth project are eligible for TCaF:
- Applications from schools to convert to academy status and form a multi-academy trust (MAT)
- Sponsor matches for schools with directive Academy Orders (dAOs)
- Trust mergers, including a single academy trust (SAT) joining a larger MAT and SATs joining together to create new trusts
- Academy transfers from one trust to another
- Approved free school bid proposals
Type of Grants
- For projects in which your trust will take on at least one additional inadequate or requires improvement school: Minimum Value – £50,000 and Maximum Value – £310,000.
- For all other trust capacity building projects: Minimum Value – £50,000 and Maximum Value – £100,000.
Eligible Activities
- Examples of activities for which you can seek TCaF funding include:
- Establishing new central processes such as IT, finance and HR
- Training and continuing professional development for staff
- New staffing within the central trust team
- Relocation costs for moving staff to new regions
- Specialist advice – such as IT, finance or HR advice – to build permanent capacity for growth
- Examples of activities for which you cannot seek TCaF funding include:
- Capital expenditure, such as the purchase of assets (for example, buildings, furniture, fittings, IT equipment or refurbishment)
- Activities that could be funded from other sources, such as legal fees that are covered by the sponsorship / conversion grant
- Time for pre-existing staff to undertake work that is already in progress as part of their current responsibilities
- Consultancy costs for delivering and managing the whole TCaF project
Eligibility Criteria
If you are an academy trust or local authority maintained school in England, to apply to either strand of TCaF you must:
- Be considered by the Education and Skills Funding Agency to be of sound financial health. As a minimum requirement, you must not have an open Financial Notice to Improve.
- Have a record of meeting, or driving improvements in, school standards. This can be demonstrated in two ways:
- Either the majority of current schools in your trust / planned trust having a Good or Outstanding rating at their last Ofsted inspection.
- Or 94% or more of the dAO academies you have taken on having received an improved Ofsted rating at their first inspection with the trust, and 80% or more of your other academies having remained stable or received an improved Ofsted rating since joining the trust.
For more information, visit https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/apply-to-the-trust-capacity-fund