A Brighton primary could close if it becomes an academy, the school’s ward councillors fear.
All three councillors for Moulsecoomb and Bevendean have voiced their opposition to plans for Coombe Road Primary School to join The Pioneer Academy (TPA) trust.
The trust already runs two other schools in Brighton and Hove – Moulsecoomb Primary and West Blatchington.
The three Labour councillors are worried that the academy trust would consolidate Coombe Road and Moulsecoomb on the Moulsecoomb Primary School site to cut costs.
The trust says it has never discussed merging the schools and does not see any reason to in the future.
Councillor Amanda Evans said: “Coombe Road Primary school is performing well – two ‘good’ Ofsted ratings and rising pupil numbers. Why the need to make such a drastic change?”
Councillor Jacob Taylor, who is also the deputy leader of Brighton and Hove City Council, said: “I’m very concerned that what is actually being consulted on is the future closure of Coombe Road Primary school – by the trust consolidating on to the larger site of Moulsecoomb primary school.
“I’ve raised this with the head and chair of governors and have received no assurances whatsoever.”
Councillor Ty Goddard said: “The proposal doesn’t make much sense at this moment in time.
“Why not work with the local authority on school improvement including capital investment in the school?”
Bringing the two schools together on one site in Moulsecoomb would mean spending less money on the cost of running both including bills for electricity and water.
It would also enable the trust to cut some staffing costs including for senior leaders and back office and support staff.
Coombe Road’s governors voted to hold a consultation on joining the Pioneer Academy trust, a group of 20 primary, infant and junior schools across the south east.
The decision was said to follow “the success of the primary school’s associate membership with TPA in the autumn term”.
This provided support for the school across a wide range of areas including for children with additional needs, PE, music and staff training and development.
The formal consultation started on Monday 19 January and is due to run until Friday 27 February, with the school promising parents and others plenty of opportunity to provide views and feedback.
Following this, the Coombe Road governors, including the head teacher Stuart Scrase, will review the outcomes of the consultation process.
If the governors decided to become an academy, and subject to approval from the Department for Education, Coombe Road would be expected to join the Pioneer Academy in the next academic year.
Peter Freeman, the school’s chair of governors, said: “We are proud of Coombe Road Primary School and everything we have achieved together as a whole school community and we want to ensure that our school remains ambitious for every child.
“As a small, one-form-entry primary school, the support available to us is limited and we believe the support and resources TPA can offer as a primary-specialist MAT (multi-academy trust) will allow us to thrive and, crucially, provide the best possible learning experience for every child while upholding our values and school identity.
“We have carefully considered this proposal following our initial work with TPA and based on initial feedback from staff as well as parents. We welcome further feedback before deciding whether to apply to join TPA.”
A spokesperson from The Pioneer Academy said: “We have never discussed or even considered merging Coombe Road with Moulsecoomb or any other school, and we do not see any reason to consider this now or in the future.
“It’s important to us that both schools – and indeed all our schools – serve their local communities and are easy for families to access.”
Their party is in government, so they could address the current school funding model if they had the political will to do it, but they clearly don’t.
Absolutely agree, these concerned councillors showed no support when schools such as Coombe Road worked really hard to reduce their deficits.
Likely the school will go from strength to strength once it is an academy as they will have some external support.
Here here! The closure of St Bart’s was appalling and if I remember correctly, Labour councillors did very little to engage with the school community directly before they closed it. Right now, big question marks about how Middle Street school has been run into the ground need to be asked too – Labour councillors meekly opposing academisation of one school does absolutely zilch when other schools are crumbling and struggling because of school funding pressures. What are the government doing, do these councillors even care their party is allowing the school funding crisis to continue?
Does Councillor Ty Goddard know his council is bankrupt and asked for a £15m bailout?
Prob not, considering that the council isn’t bankrupt, and the £15m isn’t a bailout, Pat.
It’s a £15 million LOAN Benjamin that the Labour council is going cap in hand to ask their Labour government for. How you can try and defend the Labour council on this is baffling.
The loan will be repaid over about 20 years, and I think the interest rate it will be borrowed at is around 6%, so it means that to AVOID BANKRUPTCY, Labour councillors are forcing residents to pay about an additional £10 milliion in interest over the course of the loan on top of the £15 million loan.
Meanwhile, the budget still includes really dreadful cuts, like closing Wellington House, a day centre for adults with learning difficulties.
Unless the government fix local government funding Benjamin and make sure they have the resources they need, it will only be a matter of time before the council is bankrupt. The council won’t be able to get a loan every year to make up the difference, it looks to me like they are leaving the next administration to pick up the pieces when this lot are booted out of office.
So…you agree that the council isn’t bankrupt and that this is not a bailout, by your own admission, so we’re grand on that point!
The last council meeting explained the purpose and logic of the request for additional funding, and it is worth a watch, as it’ll answer your question far better than I can.
However, you do make a great point that central government needs to change council funding; it’s not an alien concept to many councils, who are all finding themselves in a similar precarious position. BHCC, comparatively, is doing okay, considering how Greens bled the working budget to extremely low reserves, and how that’s been building back up.
If this academy trust is so altruistic and a good thing, why don’t they take on Middle Street School?
The reality is the council have not shared a clear long term strategy for LA schools to manage both the chronic underfunding of state education and also the localised significant drop in student numbers.
At present more than half of LA schools are in deficit – particularly at primary level – and the outlook is for this to increase as secondaries are further impacted by falling intakes.
They’ve suggested broad ideas like federation – and then done a very poor job of engaging schools – trying to enforce this top down (look back to 2024 when they pitched to primary heads and they walked out en masse…) – and now appear to have no strategy for what this means for school mergers / federations / closures.
In the absence of this – it shouldn’t be surprising if school Boards take action and look at other models – in this case an academy trust who does have a clear strategy that will support the schools viability.
Reading this article again – and in the absence of a strategy from the council – I would trust more the words and actions of Coombe Roads highly experienced chair who has sat on school Boards for the past 15 years (previous chair at BHAVIC).