Fresh questions over local authority director and forced academy takeover

Waltham Abbey town, in south Essex, home of Waltham Holy Cross primary school. Pic credit: Christine Matthews/Wikipedia.

Freedom of Information correspondence in the Waltham Holy Cross Primary School saga – see separate story here – seems to raise fresh questions about the role of Essex’s Director of Education, Clare Kershaw.

A four-page letter from Erica Barnett, the school’s headteacher, to Sue Baldwin, the Regional Schools Commissioner, in which Barnett pleads for the school to be allowed to join the Diocese of Chelmsford Vine Schools Trust, has been released to parents under FOI.

This had come after an Ofsted inspection judgement of “inadequate” had triggered the process of academisation, though with a sponsor still to be decided upon. The sponsor has since been chosen as NET Academies Trust (NETAT).

In the letter to Baldwin, Barnett states: “When we were first told the outcome of the inspection, the representatives from the local authority told us that the Director of Education, Clare Kershaw, would want us to go only with NETAT.”