Lancaster University School of Mathematics
A young school still running a deficit while it grows into a purpose-built home held on a 125-year government lease — Ofsted rated it Outstanding in every sub-category at its first full inspection.
Who files the accounts
Lancaster University School of Mathematics operates through The Rigby Education Trust — its own single-academy trust, distinct from Lancaster University itself.
The accounts, year by year
The most recent filed accounts (2024/25, year ended 31 August 2025) show a net result of −£227k.
| 2019/20 (first period) | 2020/21 | 2021/22 | 2022/23 | 2023/24 | 2024/25 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total income | £45k | £647k | £6.14m | £3.33m | £1.26m | £1.23m |
| of which ESFA / DfE core grant (GAG) | — | — | — | £586k | £887k | £917k |
| Total expenditure | £45k | £664k | £200k | £999k | £1.54m | £1.46m |
| of which staff costs | — | — | £0 | £329k | £650k | £742k |
| Net result for the year | £0 | −£17k | +£5.94m | +£2.33m | −£287k | −£227k |
| Total funds carried forward | £0 | −£17k | £6.58m | £8.91m | £8.62m | £8.39m |
| …of which pension (LGPS) surplus/(deficit) | — | — | — | — | — | £0 |
| Average staff (headcount) | — | — | — | 8 | 10 | 17 |
| Pupils (per the report) | — | — | — | 35 | 92 | 103 |
Figures as stated in each year's filed annual report and financial statements; see sources for the documents.
2019/20 (first period) → 2020/21 → 2021/22 → 2022/23 → 2023/24 → 2024/25
Pay disclosures
Academy trusts and charities must disclose senior pay in salary bands in their audited accounts. The most recent disclosure (2024/25) reads:
One employee (excluding the Executive Principal, who is seconded from and paid by co-sponsor Cardinal Newman College) in the £80,001–£90,000 band (2024: £70,001–£80,000). Key management personnel (trustees plus senior leadership) total employee benefits: £145,075 (2024: £209,247).
Reproduced exactly as banded in the filed accounts — the documents disclose bands, not exact salaries, and so do we.
Notable items in the accounts
- 2024/25: Total funds of £8.39m look large next to a £1.23m income, but they're mostly the school's own building: net book value of land, buildings and equipment was £8,251,092 at year end. The school moved into its purpose-built home on London Road, Preston in January 2023, held on a 125-year lease from the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities — this is a fixed-asset fund, not spare cash.
- 2024/25: Ofsted's first full inspection (April 2025) rated the school Outstanding overall and in every sub-category.
- 2024/25: Pupil numbers: 39 in the opening 2022/23 cohort, 92 in 2023/24, 103 in 2024/25, 120+ in 2025/26.
- 2024/25: Related-party payments to sponsor Cardinal Newman College — covering the Executive Principal's secondment, finance, HR, cleaning and estates — totalled £187,000 (2024: £199,000).
- 2024/25: On a revenue-only basis (excluding capital grants and depreciation, the trust's own preferred measure), the deficit narrows to about £3k — income £1,219k against expenditure £1,223k.
- 2023/24: First set of A-level results (summer 2024): 30% of all grades A*, 65% A*/A, 85% A*–B.
- 2023/24: Reserves policy explicitly states it is 'not realistic to target significant surpluses' while the school is in its formative years.
- 2022/23: The school's first year with pupils: opened 1 September 2022 in temporary accommodation at Cardinal Newman College, relocating to the purpose-built building on London Road, Preston in January 2023.
- 2022/23: Income was dominated by a £2,362,993 restricted fixed-asset capital grant for the new building, alongside £842,144 of DfE/ESFA educational funding (GAG £585,736, start-up grant £137,000, other £119,408).
- 2022/23: The trust's own filings disagree on the size of the September 2022 opening cohort: this year's report says 35, the previous year's report said 45, and the following year's report later said 39 — reproduced as each year's own contemporaneous figure, not reconciled.
- 2021/22: The building/capital-dominated pre-opening year: a £6,023,153 DfE self-delivery grant plus smaller project-development and outreach grants, against just £200,212 of (all non-pay) expenditure — no staff costs yet.
- 2021/22: The school opened for pupils the day after this year end, 1 September 2022.
- 2020/21: A pre-opening year: the trustees' report describes progressing the design and build of a purpose-built school in Preston, targeting a September 2022 opening.
- 2019/20 (first period): The Trust's first accounting period, 11 July 2019 to 31 August 2020 — no fixed assets, no staff, no pupils yet, purely a legal-entity holding period.
Sources
- 1.The Rigby Education Trust — Companies House filing history — find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/12098063/filing-history
- 2.LUSoM governance page — financial statements — lusom.ac.uk/about-us/governance/ (hosts FY22–FY25 financial statements as text-searchable PDFs)
- 3.Annual report and financial statements, year ended 31 August 2025 — lusom.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/R233-FY25-Financial-Statements-11.12.25.pdf
- 4.Accounts for years ended 31 August 2020 and 2021 — find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/12098063/filing-history (small-company abbreviated filings, not on the governance page)
- 5.DfE Financial Benchmarking and Insights Tool — financial-benchmarking-and-insights-tool.education.gov.uk/school/149099 (URN 149099 — expenditure and in-year balance match the accounts exactly; the tool's income tab showed no data, likely gated behind a DfE sign-in)
What we could not verify: No stand-alone ESFA '16 to 19 funding allocations' figure was retrieved — that dataset is a large multi-school spreadsheet not looked up this pass. The General Annual Grant figure from the audited accounts is the closest verified equivalent, shown once in the accounts table rather than duplicated as a separate allocation figure.; The accounts' higher-paid-staff table includes what looks like a formatting artifact (a stray '£10,001–£20,000' row under a note stated to cover only staff above £60,000) — reproduced as printed rather than silently corrected.; GAG is shown as blank (not zero) for 2019/20–2021/22 — the school hadn't opened yet, so there was no General Annual Grant to receive, a genuinely different situation from GAG being zero.; 2019/20 and 2020/21 have no staff-cost or headcount breakdown — these are abbreviated small-company filings at Companies House with only a bare income/expenditure statement and balance sheet, no notes.; The trust's own three consecutive annual reports state three different numbers for the September 2022 opening cohort (45, then 35, then 39) — each year's entry above uses that year's own contemporaneous figure rather than picking one as correct.; 2022/23's balance sheet 'total net assets' line reads £8,909,948, but the SOFA, the funds note, and the following year's own opening balance all agree on £8,909,648 — treated as a £300 typo in the source document and reported as £8,909,648..
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