Reinstate powers for individual school governing bodies, urges NEU with Academies Enterprise Trust central charges still under spotlight

The Government is being urged by England’s largest teachers’ union to boost the powers of school governing bodies, after this website exposed the case of academies having no choice but to make multi-million pound covert payments to the head office of a major chain.

Ministers need to explore reinstating the rights of “schools, governing bodies and their stakeholders, including parents” against allegedly over-powerful trust headquarters, the National Education Union is arguing in a letter sent to Gavin Williamson, the Education Secretary, and two cross-party Parliamentary committees.

Williamson has also been asked to explain what action individual schools and communities can take if they find themselves unhappy with the decision by a central trust to raise the amount it charges them for services, with the current structure seeming to offer no possible levers against such decision-making by boards.

The intervention centres on the case of Tendring Community College in Essex, where the NEU has been in dispute with management of the chain which controls it – Academies Enterprise Trust (AET) – over restructuring plans which the union argues “would have seriously undermined the school’s ability to provide the best teaching and learning for children as well as appropriate pastoral care”.

NEU members at the school were on strike last term over AET’s plans, which the NEU said included merging several departments, reducing middle management positions, reducing numbers of support staff and cutting the hours of “crucial school medical support”.