Related party transactions: it is time for them to stop I think. A related party transaction is when a public or charity official awards a contract or makes a payment to a company in which they or a family member has a financial interest.
This sounds like an obscure legal issue but it is not. It risks eroding the high trust in which the teaching profession is held because it shields decisions and payments from proper scrutiny. Several examples have been highlighted in the press recently.
These transactions may once have played a useful role in the early days of a more autonomous system and I wouldn’t suggest for a minute that they are all entered into with bad intent. But it is time for the education system to move on from using them, much as the charity sector has.
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