Collapsed academy trust to transfer schools to other chains-but where were their communities’ inputs?

Plus: Catholic academy conversions continue to prop up academisation numbers. And tentative new signs of DfE doing some listening on children’s mental health?

Arguably the biggest academy controversy of 2025-26 is now in its winding-down phase, with the announcement last week that the trust in question is to transfer its 24 schools to seven different organisations.

The Arthur Terry Learning Partnership, which had plunged millions of pounds into deficit, is to hand its schools over, at some yet-to-be-determined time, to trusts which it said – perhaps misleadingly, in one case - were “regionally based”.

However, it appears that the academies’ communities have had little to do with this process, with decisions seemingly simply taken for each school, in terms of which trust it joins, by the Department for Education.