Brighton and Hove City Council plans to set up its own academy trust for schools in response to a government announcement today (Monday 23 February).
The Department for Education published a “white paper” or policy proposal which would require all schools to be part of an academy trust.
The Labour deputy leader of the council, Jacob Taylor, said: “There’s a lot in the white paper, which the whole sector will be reviewing as quickly as possible.
“But I wanted to give an early commitment to the city: if the government proceeds with the plan to have all schools join an academy trust, we will set up our own local authority trust.”
“Brighton and Hove has one of the strongest local authority maintained school sectors in the country – and we have bucked the trend towards academisation.
“We believe deeply in a city family of schools – and we are confident that there would be strong support for the local authority to maintain that via our own trust.
“I will be writing to head teachers and governing bodies this week to set out our initial position. We welcome their partnership in reviewing the white paper and shaping our response as a city.
“But the message is clear: there is no need to rush off and join existing trusts – there is a better option available which is that we can create one together as a city.”
At the moment, Coombe Road Primary School is considering joining a multi-academy trust while Woodingdean Primary School recently did so.
Moulsecoomb Primary School is run by an academy trust after a poor Ofsted inspection result forced the school’s hand.
A similar process led to the creation of the Brighton Aldridge Community Academy (BACA), the Portslade Aldridge Community Academy (PACA) and City Academy Whitehawk.
Others such as Hangleton, Benfield and West Blatchington primary schools have voluntarily made the switch.
And the King’s School and the Bilingual Primary School were set up from scratch as free schools – a type of academy.
So rather than the Labour council supporting communities to “resist forced academisations” (as they promised in their 2023 local election manifesto), they are now simply talking about setting up their own academy so when the government force all schools to join an academy they can be forced to join an academy set up by the council rather than one set up by another body.
The lack of willingness of these councillors to stick up for residents against their own party’s damaging policies knows no bounds it seems.
I’m wondering what the motivation is here. The Cons wrote a similar White Paper in 2022, which is where I assume the resistance to academisation originated.
The devil will be in the detail, of course, but the major shifts I’m seeing are that, rather than simple privatisation, it’s attempting to remove the competitive aspect between schools, and fostering a more collaborative approach using economies of scale, whilst maintaining community oversight, and empowering integration with parents.
Hm. I want to know more. Right now, too early to say either way.
The Councillor states setting up a “better” option through an in house academy system.
He cannot know for certain a Council run academy system would work better than current academies in practice.
The article forgot to mention City Academy Whitehawk, which has proven so successful that it achieved outstanding in 4 of the 5 categories in the OFSTED Report.
(The only reason it was not 5 out of 5 was because the maths were slightly behind after covid. That particular cohort of pupils were in the middle classes when lockdowns happened, and returned to classes long after the reception children and those leavers in the top classes did, as leavers needed to catch up before SATs and Reception children needed familiarising again with school).
That is a shame. The council should think about what is best for the kids. Failing schools brought into good academies bring in professional turnaround teams. Many schools in Brighton are not great and some are frankly terrible so rather than defending under performing staff the council should consider what is best for the children.
What do the heads and governors of Brighton and Hove’s schools think of this plan? Or is this news story how they found out?
It’s going to be interesting to see what the school heads say. Why join the Council when you can work with a proven, more effective management team. At the moment schools succeed in spite of the council not because of them.
Are they succeeding, though? I’d gently point towards the deficits that seem to suggest otherwise. The concern of privatisation is that the community loses oversight, so a local MAT gets the benefit of a collaborative approach whilst keeping governance local.
Is this not just the council trying to maintain its ability to influence the curriculum?
It’s not closing, though…it’s been fairly clear that the aim is to outsource to a different provider, so I’m not sure what the petition is trying to achieve?