Griffin Schools Trust “to lose” Milton Keynes comprehensive which was failed by Ofsted

A controversial academy trust is to be stripped of control of its largest school, it was reported last night, with a leading councillor calling for the comprehensive to be returned to local authority oversight and for ministers to apologise.

Stantonbury International – formerly Stantonbury Campus - in Milton Keynes is to be handed to another academy chain, four years after it was academised under the Griffin Schools Trust, the Milton Keynes Citizen reported having had sight of a government letter stating this.

The paper quoted from a letter it had seen – as yet unpublished – from Baroness Berridge, the academies minister, to Trevor Edinborough, the chair of the trust.

In this, it said the minister had been unconvinced by a plan put forward by the south London-based trust to improve the school. This followed earlier warning letters about Stantonbury, which received one of the worst inspection verdicts I have seen in recent years. It would thus be given to a new trust by next July.