Fury over Regional Schools Commissioner’s plan to academise primary school in backyard of failed chain

A fresh forced academy controversy has broken, in the backyard of one of the sector’s most notorious recent failures.

Parents at a small primary school which is now due to be academised under, it is claimed, a trust whose expertise lies only in post-16 provision, have contacted Education Uncovered in bitter disappointment after the decision was announced by one of the government’s Regional Schools Commissioners.

They argue that the move to academise Crigglestone Mackie Hill school in Wakefield, west Yorkshire, flies in the face of the good work its nearest high school has been doing with it since it failed an Ofsted last year, with the government putting its academisation rules above the needs of pupils.

The plan, as overseen by Wakefield council, had been for the two schools to amalgamate as local authority institutions, only for the Regional Schools Commissioner seemingly to scrap the proposal, seemingly without explanation.

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