England’s newly “local” multi-academy trust regime will see London-based chain setting up a branch in Yorkshire for the first time

Ark Schools’ expansion into Pontefract seems to raise multiple questions. Plus: a historic admission by St Ralph Sherwin trustees points the way towards some otherwise obscure topslice figures; and the growing board-level influence of “Britain’s strictest headmaster”

With one of England’s largest and best-known academy chains poised to take over a group of schools more than 100 miles away from its nearest current institutions, Education Uncovered wonders how this sits either with new government policymaking, or with this trust’s own central set-up and ethos.

Ark Schools is in line to absorb Pontefract Academies Trust, which runs nine schools – two secondaries and seven primaries - in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, with the “merger” of the two organisations due to happen in September. All of the Pontefract schools will legally change their names as a result, to begin with the word “Ark”.

However, close readers of February’s Department for Education schools white paper might question how this development sits with that document’s drive to prioritise what it terms the “geographical coherence” of multi-academy trusts, seemingly with the idea of giving them a more local focus.