Is our school going to close? DfE: we’ve told the academy trust what the decision is and they’ll tell you in due course

My jaw frequently drops to the floor in covering the academies scheme. But for summing up the problems with decision-making-in-private which is at the root of the policy’s endless weaknesses, this latest development surely takes the biscuit.

Families of children attending two former Steiner academies in the West Country have been waiting desperately for news as to whether the secondary sections of these schools are going to have a continued existence.

The decision, which I report on here, is clearly of life-changing importance to these communities, not least for the children who attend the secondary sections of these schools, who seemingly have faced the prospect of moving to classrooms elsewhere if the closure decision, which seems on the cards, goes through.

A meeting at which that decision was taken appears to have happened last week, at the latest meeting of the government’s “Headteacher Board” for the South West.

Such meetings always take in private, meaning there is no opportunity for those affected to view decision-making in real time, as happens, for example, in local authority planning proceedings.