DfE says it has no date now pencilled in for Waltham Holy Cross primary school takeover

There is now no set date for one of England’s highest-profile forced academy transfers, Education Uncovered has learnt.

The Department for Education told this website that a “transfer date” for Waltham Holy Cross primary school in Waltham Abbey, Essex, would be “confirmed…in due course”.

The comment may seem innocuous. But it may constitute a further positive sign for the campaign against the school academising under NET Academies Trust (NETAT), as much-covered by this website over the past 15 months.

The development came in the week that another anti-forced-academy campaign, in Wakefield, west Yorkshire, was celebrating success as a controversial sponsor pulled out of taking over Criggestone Mackie Hill junior school.

Waltham Holy Cross, which failed an Ofsted inspection whose report was published in March last year, had been due to academise on Monday.

But at the last minute, last week, the move was put back. Last Friday, NETAT issued a statement to the BBC that the school’s conversion had been delayed because of the need to make the school safe given asbestos concerns. There was now a “revised [conversion] date of 1^st September.”

Parents at the school were also told, in a letter sent to them last Friday by its headteacher, that the conversion had been put back as the trust “was not in a position to complete [it] on 1^st July 2019,” but with the trust suggesting it “may be ready to take over the school on 1^st September 2019”.

However, this week the Department for Education told me that the project did not have a predicted implementation date, now.

Asked about the opposition to the move locally, including a two-hour community meeting I had attended where speaker after speaker voiced concerns, a DfE spokesperson said: “NET Academies Trust was chosen as the preferred sponsor because it has the capacity to improve schools in the Essex region…we will confirm the transfer date in due course.”

This is at least the third – possibly the fourth - time the academisation has been put back. Last September, I wrote how the scheme had been billed as happening on July 1^st, 2018, then January, 2019. Campaigners were assured last month that it was going ahead on July 1^st, 2019.

Then a DfE spreadsheet appeared stating the date as August 1^st, 2019, before the latest developments appear to have seen it kicked further back again.

There still seems some doubt, too, whether asbestos is the only reason behind the delay, with parents having instigated legal action against the move last month.

-The DfE’s response came after I put to them questions about the apparent absence of elected parents in NETAT’s governance structure. You can read that story, and the full DfE response, here.