Former chair of governors says he lost position –and “local governing body” members were replaced –after challenging United Learning on spending and appointments

A former chair of governors, at a school which has been beset by controversy over its behaviour policies, has said he believes he was effectively sacked after challenging England’s largest academy trust over how it was seeking to appoint senior staff.

Steve King, who served as chair of governors at Coleridge Community College in Cambridge from September 2019 to March 2020, wrote a letter on behalf of the school’s local governing body to Sir Jon Coles, chief executive of the United Learning Trust (ULT), which had questioned decision-making.

King says that, having communicated in this way and also having a conversation with the trust in which he said he had lost confidence in it, his position was effectively ended as his official email was simply switched off. He says the local governing body was effectively disbanded at the same time. In what may be an indication of how little protection the positions of individual governing bodies are given within the multi-academy trust structure, King even says he was never formally told he had been ”sacked”.

United Learning says it does not comment on individual cases, though it was a “strength of the trust model that the trust is able to remove members of a local governing body behaving inappropriately, causing harm to a school or undermining its leadership”.

Coleridge, which joined United Learning in 2019 having been part of a local four-school academy trust which had opted voluntarily into the bigger set-up, has faced contention over behaviour policies, which were launched under ULT in 2020, and with local controversy intensifying from September 2021.