Analysis: issues behind our Great Yarmouth investigation

Great Yarmouth town hall. Pic by Adam Smith, via Creative Commons.

There are many implications of our story today about the planned merger of two schools in the Norfolk town of Great Yarmouth.

This may seem, as so many academy and free schools sagas will, like a complicated, parochial tale of interest only to one community. But the ramifications, in terms of the way schools reform is being managed in England, are multiple.

Reality differing from what parents have been told?

The most immediately striking thing to parents with children at Trafalgar College – the free school, set up only in September 2016, which it is proposed will merge with another secondary, Great Yarmouth Charter Academy – is the timeline exposed by the documents we’ve been leaked.