welcome to bbc news, broadcasting to viewers in north america and around the globe. our top stories: british mps are set to vote on a range of alternative plans for brexit, but can theresa may now on bbc news, panorama. continue as prime minister? survivors of the so—called caliphate. on panorama tonight: we report from syria on the families stranded in camps and shunned a scandal in english schools. by the world. we investigate two academy trusts. ijust want people to hear what happens in academies, the longer it goes on, the corruption that goes the more there is a risk that on behind those doors. something could go wrong, there could be instability we hear from two headteachers in the region again. unless a plan is put in place soon, turned whistle—blowers. this really is a ticking time bomb. i can't stay here and watch a group committed to overthrowing kim jong—un says it carried last what they're doing to my school. month's raid on north we uncover evidence korea's embassy in spain. of organised cheating in exams. she walked past, looked at my test and she stopped and she just pointed at it, went, "that's the answer" and told me the answer. and we ask: why is nobody holding

academy bosses to account? i know that you organised and allowed cheating across the trust. can you tell me why you did that? the parents and children deserve answers, what would you say to that? last year panorama exposed an education scandal. the money should have been spent on the children. 8,300 schools have become academies, paid for by the taxpayer but run by private trusts. we showed how some academy trust have exploited the schools they run, and how the government has failed to supervise them. this can never, ever be

allowed to happen again. after the first programme we were contacted by lots of unhappy people working in academies. headteachers, senior management staff, as well as parents and governors. they all claim that academy trusts are damaging their schools too. i'm going to see the head teacher of aspire academy in essex. deb garfield is turning whistle—blower, even though she knows it might get herfired. hello, bronagh, lovely to meet you... her deputy head kathryn webb is risking herjob by speaking out too. we watched the programme and we started texting each other at the time just saying, "oh my god". this is our story. it just made us feel that we weren't really on our own and that perhaps it is a bigger problem. how big a step was it contacting us?

huge. in many ways it's almost career suicide for people. i've never spoken out against my bosses before and in such a public way but we've tried to do it the proper way through the proper channels but we've just not been able to get anywhere and we've been pushed into a corner. it's for our children. aspire takes children who have been excluded from mainstream schools. deb and catherine helped to set up the academy in 2014. our kids have quite often had a raw deal from education and to see them have a brand—new school that had been built for them was lovely to see. the school's finances were fine. then, in december 2017, aspire joined a multi academy trust

to improve the education on offer. the bills immediately stopped being paid. we've got a notification for further action. a notice to disconnect our gas supply. a notice to disconnect our electricity supply. we've got a final demand now on ourfire alarm monitoring. 0verdue balance. a reminder notice for our telephones. immediate suspension of service for our sanitary bin disposal. these are all red notices, right? these are your final demands, right? absolutely. a solicitor‘s letter here for our cleaning company. notice of disconnection for our text messaging for parents, which is part of safeguarding. and we've got disconnection notices for our water company as well here. before the trust came on board, where you meeting your demands? yes, we have always run our accounts really well. we have never owed anybody anything because we have had the funds there to pay for it.

the trust that took over aspire is called tbap. it runs 11 schools for excluded pupils and got almost £17 million from the taxpayer last year. the trust says it provides outstanding alternative education and has transformed the lives of over 4,000 young people. one of its schools featured in this bbc series showing just how tough working with excluded kids can be. this is the man who set tbap up. good afternoon, everybody. my name is seamus 0ates and i'm ceo and executive head teacher of the tbap trust. seamus 0ates is a ceo of a chain of schools for excluded children. but there are questions around how the trust has spent public money.

in 2018 the trust had fewer than 700 pupils. but there were 18 members of staff earning more than £60,000 per year. in total they were paid £1.8 million. seamus 0ates received salary and benefits of around £220,000. all those big salaries leave less money to pay the school bills. these are not small amounts, these are thousands of pounds. they have pretty much built up from december when we moved over to the trust. this is all we deal with every day. as a head teacher, when i should be in my school working with my students, i'm having to speak to solicitors, i'm having to speak to people who come to the door demanding their money, saying they're going to take theirfire doors back. that's the level we're operating at now. people coming into the school looking for money? yes, absolutely.

0ur evidence shows unpaid bills piling up at other tbap schools as well so the government is giving the trust a bail out of £1.6 million. it's not the only academy trust with financial problems. one in 20 are in deficit, that's around 500 schools. these parents also got in touch after watching our first programme on academies. they had concerns about another academy chain, the silver birch trust, which runs four primary schools in the london area. the lady in charge, the ceo, was a lady called pat davies. almost as soon as she'd come in, our head teacher resigned. the governing body, we had no meetings, we had no powers. we weren't getting any data, no paperwork. we were told finances wasn't our remit any more. we turned from governing body

holding the school to account and having the information and making decisions into a local advisory committee. we were told clearly we didn't have information about finances, it was now the trust board who were holding the school to account. but pat davies was on the trust board also, so she's holding herself to account. there was a bit of conflict—of—interest there. so sorry to interrupt your assembly. yeah, if you'd like to come in the middle of us... congratulations, you have been named head teacher of the year, 2011. applause. she set up silver birch in 2012. a whistle—blower soon raised concerns about how she was spending public money.

silver birch was investigated in 2014 and serious failings were found. but the government allowed patricia davies to stay in herjob and take on more schools. her salary and benefits increased to £250,000 a year. she also gave jobs to her relatives. the social worker at one of the schools was pat's daughter. there was also head of school at chingford hall was her husband. and was it openly recognised by pat that this was her daughter? the first i heard of it was when the interim consultant head said to me that he's never seen so many family members working in one organisation before. it's not just parents who are unhappy with the way patricia davies ran silver birch.

suzanne barham was head teacher at one of the trust's schools until she resigned in 2017. the culture was that you did exactly what mrs davies wanted you to do, no questions asked. she says she left because she was bullied and undermined by patricia davies. you are in constant fear of losing yourjob, knowing that there was members of mrs davies' family working there, friends of hers, saying the wrong thing, which i did do on a number of occasions, and i was promptly taken into her office and given a good telling off. and as a grown woman, to be humiliated like that, i spent many days in tears. that's what it was like, it was hell.

patricia davies didn'tjust give family members jobs at silver birch. this is the caretaker‘s house at chingford hall school. in 2016 the caretaker was moved out and the trust spent £99,000 renovating the property. we've discovered patricia davies then moved her daughter in rent—free. it shows how easy it is for people running trusts to exploit the system. that's just beyond the pale. you cannot have personal benefit from taxpayers money like that, it should never be allowed and it is completely wrong. there is no justification for doing that. you shouldn't be employing your own relatives, you shouldn't be putting them up rent—free.

i cannot see anyjustification for that whatsoever. it is looking a lot more tired than the last time i was here. it's been three months since i first visited aspire, the school that is struggling to pay the bills after being taken over by tbap trust. the school deals with the most troubled children so it often gets damaged but now there's not enough money for repairs. the radiator seems to get a very hard deal here. yes, that one gets fixed most days and this door got a bit of a kicking by one of our students and it has split down the edge. the company we used to use for the fire doors we cannot use anymore because we haven't paid them. it now doesn't close so you have to give it a good pull. it's notjust the building suffering.

deb garfield's deputy has gone off sick because of stress and now tbap is cutting jobs because it is short of cash. this trainee teacher has just been told she may have to leave aspire. we are literally numbers on a spreadsheet that can just be deleted without any thought. it is horrid to watch. but reducing staff numbers in a school like this can put students at risk. so we have got a member of staff on each leg, one on each arm and one behind. it takes a lot of teachers to restrain or separate fighting students. i honestly thought when i was on the floor with that kid, i thought i was going to get seriously hurt. and that was it. i tried to protect him so much. there's been times recently where there has been an uneasy

feeling of "we have just got to manage this carefully because there's not enough of us right now to be safe". tbap says it has "the very highest standards in maintaining a safe environment". and that it has "implemented robust risk assessments" when reducing staff. the trust is in serious debt, and we have uncovered new evidence about the way the chief executive seamus 0ates has managed public money. i am interested in any time you spent working in tbap and on their financial situation in the last few years? tbap‘s public accounts were found to be inaccurate so i have been

talking to insiders who know what went on. do you know if there were financial problems before that? they say tbap‘s accounts were deliberately falsified to make it look as if the trust was in good financial shape. he was saying everyone, right up to the ceo, seamus 0ates, everyone knew that? the sources independently gave matching descriptions of how the books were cooked. what the source has told me is shocking. they said when finances were tight, the trust simply made up figures to make the accounts look better. they told me the head of the trust, seamus 0ates, knew all about it. tbap says this is false. it says it ran into financial difficulties due to a lack of external funding and poor, internal financial systems and that it responded with robust measures to improve its finances.

including the complete overhaul of its financial controls and systems. tbap says there has been no personal wrongdoing by staff. the trust told the government, it had a £750,000 deficit. but an external team discovered the debt was actually 2.4 million. 900 e—mails about unpaid bills hadn't even been opened. it's a financial shambles. seamus 0ates has taken a pay cut. but why is he still running the trust? he took his eye off the ball and the government wasn't strong enough to blow the whistle on him quick enough, that's what happened.

it sounds like more than weak governance, it sounds like not only someone took their eye off the ball but missed the game entirely? i am not going to defend poor financial management to that extent, but the important thing to say is that we do have the resources to intervene intensively when these things happen and we are monitoring their performance very closely. but the government has repeatedly failed to spot serious problems. take the silver birch trust, where patricia davies employed her husband and daughter. it runs longshaw primary school in london. in 2017, parents and pupils accused teachers of cheating during the sat exams. the tests that are used in school league tables. 0n the last day, the children stormed out of the door

when the bell went and quite a few of them were screaming, we have done well, we have done well! we have great marks, we are going to pass. as parents, will a saying, how do you know? the boys were quite vocal, they thought it was hilarious. we cheated, we cheated! they left as a cheat. skipping up the hill. kelly's daughter sophie sat her mathematics test that day. the kid would go, "miss, i don't understand this." then the teacher will tell them the answer. did you get told any of the answers? yes. can you show me which one you were given the answer for? this one. did she tell you or just give you a hint? she walked past and looked

at my test and she stopped. she pointed at it and said, that's the answer and then told me the answer. why do you think of that? i was so annoyed, i looked at her — what are you doing, this is a test. the cheating allegations were investigated by a government agency and the exam results were allowed to stand. but now, the school's former head teacher has agreed to come clean. she says she was ordered to cheat by the trust's chief executive, patricia davies. we were sort of told or directed to go and work with specific children to give them a little help, shall we say. when you say help, do you mean give them the answers? yes. those children were given answers. when you have been asked to do that

suzanne and you have done it, how were you feeling? awful. you know, you just... you know it's not what should happen and it is the wrong thing and it's not going to help the children. suzanne barham says she was also instructed to cheat on the sats reading test. mrs davies called me into her office and it is a reading paper, so you cannot read it to them. she said i want you to read it for them. isaid, what do you mean, read it? the questions? she said no, i want you to read it for them. i said it's a reading test. she said, i know. you did what pat told you to do otherwise he will knew you wouldn't have a job.

so i did read the paper. we put the cheating allegation to patricia davies and the trust but they denied it. suzanne barham says the data from other test results was also falsified from three schools in the trust. they would say, change that one, change that one. they would literally give me the sheet of paper, the actual results were on and then they would cross them out and right next to it what they wanted me to put in. how often do you think you are asked to put in data that was either inaccurate or changed ? every time there was a standard test being done. so it would have been three lots of data in three years. every time it was changed and inflated ? yes. what is the implications for the trust or other benefit

for the trust in doing that? the benefit for the trust is their results are continually looking really, really good. in actual fact, very high 80s into the 90s consistently year upon year, very near hundreds. suzanne barham tried to warn the government about all the problems at silver birch more than a year ago. she collected statements from 28 members of staff. the department for education says it is investigating, but it still hasn't contacted the whistle—blowers. why has no one contacted her in order to follow through with that complaint? the work isn't finished, that is the important thing to say. i am sure the teacher regulation agency we want to talk to some of these whistle—blowers and i will encourage my own officials

to do the same. new trustees are now running silver birch. we have obtained minutes that show them talking about a bombshell regarding the finances. the minutes reveal they were shocked at the lack of financial control and that the trust was approaching insolvency. they also say that patricia davies was offered the chance to resign, despite there being evidence of gross misconduct. patricia davies has now resigned, but she could have been stopped earlier. would you accept that there were problems there from 2014 and why didn't they act sooner? it is fair to say the department wasn't tough enough in its earlier enquiry. the fact she was warned of any missed doings then and chose

to ignore them, i think is a very serious reflection of her behaviour. patricia davies told us she was not able to respond to our questions and she did not explain why. but is that really good enough? she's accused of misusing public money and organising cheating in exams. mrs davies, my name is bronagh munro and i work for the bbc. i want to talk to you about silver birch trust and ask you why you run the trust into the ground. where did all the money go, mrs davies? mrs davies, i know you organised and allow cheating across the trust. why did you do that? mrs davies, the children and parents deserve answers. what do you say to that? mrs davies, would you like to answer

some questions please? mrs davies is clearly a trust manager who feel she doesn't have to account for the way she spent public money. it is now four months since i visited aspire, the academy for excluded pupils. the tbap trust says it has now paid many of the overdue bills but head teacher deb garfield is facing further budget cuts. i know i can't personally carry on running the school as a tbap school. i cannot stay here and watch what they are doing to my school. everything that we've worked for,

five years, has just been ploughed into the ground at the moment. to see it happening in front of you is really difficult. i am thinking about leaving education altogether, i don't think i could do it again. you are one of the strongest people i have met. i am sorry. whatever i do in my life, this will be the most proudest thing i have ever done. i am so proud of aspire, so proud of my kids and the star. my staff are incredible. it is a shame that it's come to this, really. the next day, deb garfield went off sick with stress. the government insists its flagship educational policy is driving up standards.

i think people perhaps forget how big the changes have been over the last seven or eight years. so as a system it is improving. i would like to see it improving quicker but we are seeing enormous transformations across the system. but we have investigated two academy trusts run by high—profile managers and we have found the government failed to prevent serious problems in both. tbap is surviving on taxpayer hand—outs. it is still being run by seamus 0ates, the boss who failed to spot a £2.4 million deficit. and silver birch trust will close down next week. when it schools are transferred to another academy trust. we think the department for education is quite embarrassed about what is happening because there has been very little sanction against anybody who has overspent money or acted inappropriately in terms

of running the school. they need to step up and make sure there are sanctions against people so they never run a school again. two head teachers have risked everything to blow the whistle. suzanne barham, says she will never work for an academy trust again. ijust want people to hear what happens in academies. the corruption that goes on behind those doors. it should be all about the children and not a ploy to make money. once again, we have exposed how some academies are failing our children. have some academy trusts are failing to protect public money and how the government is failing to hold academies to account.