Responding to the Government’s response to the Education Select
Committee’s Seventh Report of Session 2016–17 on Multi Academy
Trusts (MATs),Kevin Courtney, Joint General Secretary of
the National Education Union, said:
“The Government should hang its head in shame at this response.
To claim that multi academy trusts are held accountable at all
levels and that the Department holds trusts to account and
intervenes swiftly when problems arise is a grotesque parody of
the real situation.
“The parents of children in the 21 schools in the Wakefield City
Academy Trust know only too well that there was no accountability
within that academy trust and that the Regional Schools
Commissioners missed every warning sign that things were going
wrong.
“Staff at Whitehaven Academy, run by the Bright Tribe academy
trust, wrote an open letter to their MP, the Regional School
Commissioner and the Prime Minister a year ago pleading for the
school to be removed from the Trust. Yet neither the RSC, nor any
of her team, have visited the school in the last year. In a
disgraceful incident, the Conservative MP was ‘frogmarched’ off
the premises when she visited the school at the request of her
local constituents to see for herself the poor state of the
school buildings.
“The reality is that there is no accountability within the
academy system. Unaccountable Trustees make decisions about the
running of schools with no accountability to parents or
communities. RSCs appear clueless about what is happening in MATs
in their Region, and even when problems are pointed out to them
they are unwilling to act.
“Schools must be returned to their local authority family of
schools. This is the only way in which democratic oversight and
accountability of schools can be secured.”
