Ofsted-outstanding primary, controlled by Conservative peer’s academy chain, poised to appoint its eighth headteacher in five years

Parents at a primary school within a high-profile academy trust are venting their concern as the institution now prepares to install its eighth headteacher in the past five years.

Millbank Academy, in Pimlico, central London, is seeking a new leader after its head of the past nine months, Kate Jefferson, announced that she is leaving to take up a post at the fee-charging Westminster Under School.

In what has been among the highest turnovers of school leadership Education Uncovered can recall seeing in the recent past, Jefferson is the sixth head or acting head at Millbank after her long-serving predecessor, Alyson Russen, left in 2016.

These changes have not been subject to scrutiny in an inspection by Ofsted, however, as Millbank’s last visit from inspectors was back in 2013, when Russen was 19 years into her 22-year leadership of the school. That visit adjudged the school “outstanding”, a rating which it retains.

Millbank is part of the Future Academies chain presided over by the former academies minister and Conservative peer and donor Lord John Nash and his wife, Lady Caroline Nash.  It academised under the chain in 2012 and official data says it had a pupil roll of only 330 as of a year ago, or 78 per cent of its 420-pupil capacity. Pupil numbers have slumped by 27 per cent since the school academised under Future, official data as of January 2020 show.