Headteacher joins union picket line in dispute involving multi-academy trust for whom she works

Head calls for more transparency over budgets of schools within Nicholas Postgate Catholic Academy Trust, in dispute which puts spotlight on local vs centralised control of schools.

A headteacher joined a union picket line in a dispute with her own employer yesterday, and voiced dissatisfaction with a “lack of transparency with the school budget” as overseen by her multi-academy trust, according to a local news report.

Dee Patton-Statham, head of St George’s Catholic Primary School in York, joined striking teachers, parents and staff as the National Education Union staged strikes at this school and a secondary which are both run by the Middlesbrough-based Nicholas Postgate Catholic Academy Trust (NPCAT).

The NEU is in dispute with the 35-school chain over financial management, with the union calling for schools in York to be run by a trust based in the town, a maximum “top-slice” of four per cent, an end to the practice of “gag-pooling” – whereby school budgets are put into one big pot controlled by the trust – and for restraint over the chief executive’s pay.

A call for greater local control of budgeting, then, seemed to be at the heart of the controversy in this case.