Sleazy deals at academy schools have seen unaccountable managers siphon off thousands in public cash to buy “services” provided by themselves, top MPs warned yesterday.

The system’s murky underbelly was laid bare in a report to the education select committee which found “questionable practices” with “very large sums of public money” being paid to trust board members and their companies.

Tory committee chair Graham Stuart said it had exposed “a number of loopholes” that cast doubt on whether privately managed academies had breached rules dictating that services can only be provided “at cost” and not for profit.

Following the news National Union of Teachers general secretary Christine Blower demanded an outright ban on anyone connected to running a school making money “either directly or indirectly.”

She added that the veil of secrecy would only really be lifted if academies were forced to publish school-by-school accounts.

Among the cases highlighted by the report is one in East Sussex, where four primary schools run by the Aurora Academies Trust forked out £100,000 a year to buy US parent firm Mosaica Education’s “patented” global curriculum.

In another, Academy Enterprise Trust— which runs 80 schools— had paid trustees and executives £500,000 over three years for services such as project management and consultancy.

And an anonymous interviewee told how a head teacher had blown £50,000 on a one-day course run by a friend.

Ms Blower branded the findings “the inevitable result of the marketisation of education.

“Education should be managed in the interests of children, not in the interests of those who seek to make a profit from running our schools,” she said.