Future Academies “no longer recruiting subject specialist primary teachers”

One of the England’s most well-connected academy trusts is doing away with a teaching approach which helped make it distinctive –and controversial –I understand.

Future Academies, which is overseen by the former minister Lord John Nash and his wife Lady Caroline Nash, is reducing the use of subject-specialist teachers in its primary schools, in favour of having newly-recruited staff teach most subjects to a single class, which of course is the typical model pre-secondary in the state sector.

The subject-specialist approach, in which teachers move between classes, was central to Future’s vision for its three primaries, all of which are in Westminster, central London.

It was contentious, however, from the start. Back in November 2012, only two months after Future had taken over its first primary school, Millbank Academy, Lady Nash had faced questions from staff at another one which had been lined up for the trust: Churchill Gardens.

A staff member had put it to Lady Nash, a director of Future then and now, that the curriculum for the trust’s other primary, called Pimlico Primary, would be “subject based rather than play based,” with Lady Nash responding that “We would expect the curriculum to become more subject based, with discrete subject teaching from the middle years on (Key Stage 2).”*