Des Smith, a council member of the trust that helps recruit sponsors for academies, disclosed that if a donor gave sufficient money, he could be nominated for an OBE, CBE or even a knighthood.
He described what appeared to be a tariff system, in which a benefactor who gave to “one or two” academies might receive such an honour while a donor who gave to five would be “a certainty” for a peerage.
Smith’s comments came during an undercover investigation by The Sunday Times. Suspicions of a link between honours and donations to academies — Blair’s scheme for new privately backed schools — have existed since the ambitious programme of establishing up to 200 academies began in 2001. Six of the biggest academy sponsors have already been honoured after pledging their money.
Smith is an adviser to Sir Cyril Taylor, chairman of the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust (SSAT), and says he has been a regular visitor to Downing Street. Smith is a council member of the SSAT, and Taylor personally recommended him as a potential “project director” to an undercover reporter who approached the trust posing as a would-be donor.
On Friday, Smith told a reporter posing as a donor’s PR assistant that “the prime minister’s office would recommend someone like (the donor) for an OBE, a CBE or a knighthood”.
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“Really?” replied the reporter. “Just for getting involved with the academies?”
“Just for, yes, they call them ‘services to education’,” replied Smith. He went on: “I would say to Cyril’s office that we’ve now got to start writing to the prime minister’s office.”
Smith was even more confident about the prospect of securing an honour if the donor was willing to give as much as £10m.
“You could go to the House of Lords and get a lord . . . become a lord,” he said.
“So, if you invested in five city academies over, say, a 10-year period, it would be . . .” said the reporter.
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“A certainty,” said Smith.
Yesterday David Willetts, the shadow education secretary, said the honours system should not be used to buy support for a policy in this way: “There is a fine line here between recognising public-spirited people who wish to support education and blatantly rewarding people for propping up one of the prime minister’s pet projects.”
Taylor yesterday called Smith’s claims “outrageous.” He said: “In no way is giving money to the academy linked to the award of an honour.”
He admitted recommending people for honours in the past but not because they had given money to an academy: “I have never said to any prospective or existing sponsor that if they sponsor an academy, that I would recommend them for an honour.”
Smith himself backtracked when confronted by The Sunday Times. “It is not possible (to acquire an honour by a donation),” he said.