Free school head jailed over £69,000 fraud

THE founder of a flagship free school has been jailed for five years for defrauding the Department for Education of tens of thousands of pounds.

The Kings Science Academy in Bradford, which was praised by David Cameron during a high-profile visit in 2012, should have been set up to educate, not as a “vehicle for making money”, said Judge Christopher Batty.

Sajid Hussain Raza, 43, who was also the headmaster, was jailed at Leeds Crown Court, along with two former staff, Daud Khan and Shabana Hussain, who were sentenced to 14 months and six months respectively.

The trio were convicted in August of making payments into their own bank accounts from government grants given to help set up what was one of the first free schools.

The fraud, totalling £69,000, continued for three years, from November 2010 to December 2013.

Free schools were part of the Conservative manifesto in 2010, to allow charities, parents or other groups to set up establishments outside local authority control.

The judge said: “They are called free schools because of the way they were set up, entrusted with funds as a trust, a non-profit-making organisation. They were set up to educate children. They were not set up to be a vehicle for making money by those who ran them.”

Raza made the application for the 500-place secondary to open in September 2011.

Grants were given to cover the costs of setting up the school. But Raza and Hussain, his sister and a teacher there, made payments from them into their personal bank accounts.

Khan, the financial director, did not receive any payment but the fraud could not have taken place without him. Raza and Khan also submitted inflated or fabricated invoices for rent and other fees.

The trial heard that Raza used some of the money for mortgage repayments on rental properties he owned and was making a loss on.

Benjamin Hargreaves, defending Raza, said his client’s motivation had been “entirely genuine”.

The judge told him: “This school may well have been the thing you always wanted to pursue but you also wanted money. Making money was important to you because of the school and because of the debt around your neck.”