Not-so-hidden agenda behind controversial forced academisations would be exposed in glare of greater transparency. No wonder decision-making happens in secret

How desperate does the government have to be, in its search for academy sponsors, that it is prepared to put forward trusts, to take on hugely contentious school takeovers, with the records which some of them have?

As Education Uncovered reports today, the Department for Education appears to be lining up New Horizons Academy Trust (NHAT) to take on one of the most fiercely-contested forced academisation moves currently on the stocks – Moulsecoomb primary in Brighton – despite this one-school-chain not ever having had a school go through an Ofsted inspection.

Another trust, which took on a school which NHAT had pulled out of last year, raised apparently serious concerns – in its annual accounts - about how that school had been run as an academy under NHAT. And New Horizon’s own latest accounts saw it state that there was a “significant risk” to its operations if it did not take on new schools.

As a parent, reading the above, would you be happy for your child’s school to be handed to such an organisation?

And yet, this is exactly the proposition that families are being expected to swallow, without detailed explanation or even, seemingly, much by way of an official announcement to the community.