Revealed: primary pupils at former minister’s traditionalist academy chain receiving no computing or RE lessons and two per week for science - but 19 in history, English and Latin

Pupils at primary academies within a former minister’s school chain are currently receiving no religious education or information technology teaching, while experiencing more than three lessons of history for every one they are taught in science.

History lessons for key stage 2 children at the three schools within the Future Academies chain are also taking up more time than is being devoted to maths, through timetables which seem to leave the schools – which are overseen and effectively controlled by the Conservative peer Lord John Nash and his wife, Lady Caroline Nash - as national outliers.

This term, a governor at one of the schools, all of which are in Westminster, central London, warned of parents’ concerns that the curriculum was “imbalanced”, with an alleged over-emphasis on history leaving little room for STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) subjects. Computing/information technology has not featured on the curricula of any of these primary schools for approaching two years.

A source close to this school – Millbank Academy – has told Education Uncovered that there are widespread concerns among teachers within this primary about the content of its curriculum, this person saying: “I don’t know a single member of staff who thinks that the curriculum is suitable”.

Staff are said to have raised concerns about the content of individual history lessons. An ancient history textbook, seen by this website, sees pupils given a creative writing task in which they must imagine themselves as Cleopatra, with Antony lying dead in her arms, and then instructed to “write your final thoughts as you prepare to take your own life”.

Similarly, children are asked to imagine themselves as the first century philosopher Seneca, as he committed suicide in a hot bath.

One prominent history educationist, Dr Sean Lang of Anglia Ruskin University, has offered a detailed critique of those history-teaching resources developed by the trust which are publicly visible on its website. He says they remind him of his own primary school education from the 1960s.

A parent told this website that they regarded what was going on in the schools as a “social experiment,” as the Nashes sought to impose a conservative curriculum overseen and seemingly steered by someone apparently without teaching qualifications -Lady Nash-on a disadvantaged community.

Future, where the former stockbroker and history graduate Lady Nash describes herself as the “leading force for curriculum development across the trust”, defends its curriculum as empowering its students.

But it seems that if professionals and parents take a different view in terms of the balance and content of the educational diet on offer, there are few places for them to go, with Ofsted only having visited one of the chain’s three primary schools in the past five years, curriculum balance not having featured in its report then, the schools’ approach having had official endorsement by the DfE, and with any local scope for parents voting with their feet by choosing other primaries being constrained.

Meanwhile, concerns have also been raised about the content of individual lessons at the schools, including an alleged under-representation of ethnic minority figures and the issue of slavery within history, and of non-white authors in English, and an over-emphasis on heavily-scaffolded essays, which children are said to face from year 2 onwards.

Future Academies has not responded to any recent request for comment from Education Uncovered, including when sent a very detailed email on the above.

The detail

Education Uncovered spoke to sources who have raised concerns about the balance of the curriculum at Future’s primary schools. The degree to which the schools have departed from national norms, seemingly with little or no consultation with parents, is clear on analysis of the detail of pupils’ timetables, which feature seven 50-minute lessons per day.

Subject	Number of lessons	Total time
Maths	6	5 hours
English	4	3h 20m
Grammar	4	3h 20m
Oracy	1	50m
Spelling	1	50m
British history	4	3h 20m
Ancient history	3	2h 30m
Science	2	1 h 40m
Geography	2	1 h 40m
PE	2	1 h 40m
PSHE	1	50m
Art	1	50m
Latin	2	1h 40m
Music	2	1h 40m
ICT	0	0
Religious ed	0	0
MFL	0	0
Design+tech	0	0
Source: upper key stage 2 timetable, Millbank Academy

A timetable for upper primary pupils at Millbank* shows how, this academic year, pupils have received four 50 minute lessons of history and three of ancient history – five hours and 50 minutes – every week.

This means history, which in most schools takes up less than an hour a week, has the second-longest teaching allocation in this primary, after English. In the latter subject, children receive four subjects in “English” per se, plus four in “grammar”, one in oracy and one in spelling: 10 in total.

In comparison, children are taught six 50-minute lessons of maths each week, while there are only two for science.

In 2019, Future also abandoned its information and communications technology provision, by making its teacher in the subject redundant.  So it no longer features on the timetable. I understand that this happened without consultation, and without parents and pupils even being told that the subject was being scrapped before it happened.

In its place, Latin lessons were increased, I am told: currently, upper primary pupils have two lessons in the ancient language per week.

Latin is the only foreign language on the curriculum for pupils, after Millbank’s French teacher was made redundant last year.

Design and technology is also not on the timetable for pupils.

Finally, religious education does not feature, either, on the upper primary timetable. I understand it has not been taught at Millbank since last year, when a staff member who had been teaching it left. Yet this appears to leave the school in breach of its funding agreement with the government (see below).

The absence of computing, design and technology and religious education from the timetable comes despite Future’s extended teaching day, which was controversially introduced last September, increasing teaching time overall from six lessons per day to seven.

The upshot is to leave history, English and Latin – which are said within Future to be the favourites of Lady Nash – with 19 lessons in total and maths, science and (the non-existent) computing with only eight lessons. It seems open to debate whether the above represents the “broad and balanced” curriculum which all state-funded schools – including academies – are legally required to provide to children.

Parents raise concerns

Anxiety about this was vividly set out in a letter sent by a governor at Millbank Academy to Paul Smith, Future’s chief executive, in January, which has been seen by many parents. Millbank opted to become an academy in 2012, was adjudged “outstanding” by Ofsted the following year but has had no inspections while experiencing a succession of headteachers since 2016.

The governor’s letter said: “There is an overall lack of satisfaction with the 'academisation' of Millbank. This, it is felt, has led to an imbalanced curriculum and a reduction in parental input to decision making. In particular, the perceived over-emphasis on the many different History threads leaves little room for Science and other STEM subjects. This is particularly felt in the removal of Computing from the curriculum, especially given the impressive resources that Millbank has available for teaching IT.”

The letter went on: “There is some support for Latin which many students enjoy learning, but often it is felt that a modern spoken language would be more useful and relevant. It is felt that the English Literature curriculum has a bias towards White British literature, which is particularly disappointing given the multicultural nature of the school. Overall, it is noted that the curriculum changes are imposed without input from parents.”

The “multi-cultural nature of the school” point is backed up by official Department for Education data, which recorded that as of last year only 8.2 per cent of children at the school were classed as “white British”. (The figures for Future’s two other primaries, Pimlico Primary and Churchill Gardens, were 5.5 per cent and seven per cent respectively at the January 2020 school census). Pupils of “African ethnic origin” were the most-well represented single ethnic group in the school, on 16 per cent, followed by Bangladeshi-origin pupils, on nine per cent.

How this contrasts with other schools

Finding out what the situation is with regard to curriculum balance at other schools is much harder than it once was. This is ironic given the current emphasis now placed on the subject diet in schools by both ministers and Ofsted.

Before 2010, the old Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) presided over detailed monitoring of the curriculum, including the amount of time allocated in schools to individual subjects. Such a survey no longer exists. Ofsted also seems no longer to publish detailed subject-specific investigations as it once did.  

But some insights are possible to glean from other sources. One very useful, if unofficial, set of data came via the primary headteacher and blogger Michael Tidd, who carried out a survey of primary timetables in 2019.

He asked primaries to provide information on how much time they were spending teaching each subject in. Some 550 schools responded.

To give a direct comparison with upper primary at Millbank, it is useful to compare the figures in those responses. I used Tidd’s findings** for year five as my comparison. This is set out in the following table.

Subject	% time taught, national survey schools, y5	% taught, Millbank
English	32.9%	28.5%
maths	28.5%	17.1%
PE	8.9%	5.7%
science	6.1%	5.7%
computing	3.7%	0%
history	3.7%	20.0%
art and design	3.3%	2.9%
geography	2.8%	5.7%
PSHE or similar	2.8%	2.9%
design and tech	2.4%	0%
foreign langs	2.4%	5.7%
music	2.4%	5.7%

Tidd’s survey showed only 45 minutes per week in year 5 lessons devoted to history, on average across the survey schools, compared to the staggering five hours 50 minutes in upper primary at Millbank.

It is true that, actually, in terms of raw amount of time, science is taught for longer at Millbank than the average amount in year 5 in Tidd’s survey.

However, partially thanks to its extended day, the total amount of weekly teaching time at Millbank for all subjects is also far longer. This means that science teaching at the Future school is actually slightly lower, as a proportion of the teaching week (5.7 per cent), than it is across Tidd’s survey (6.1 per cent).

At both Millbank – despite its extended day - and across Tidd’s survey, the total amount of time devoted to science is less than the two hours per week recommended by organisations including the Association for Science Education and the Wellcome Trust.

Pupils at Millbank receive substantially less tuition in maths – in absolute terms, despite the extended day, and as a proportion of the week – than was the case across Tidd’s survey.

With computing and design and technology given no time at Millbank, this means that the total time spent on STEM subjects (maths, science; computing and design and technology) in upper primary in Millbank amounts to just 23 per cent of the teaching week, compared to 41 per cent in Tidd’s survey.

And pupils at Millbank spend more time on non-STEM subjects – primarily English and history – than on all subjects – STEM and non-STEM - combined in Tidd’s survey. The proportion of time allocated at Millbank to history and ancient history alone – at 20 per cent – is more than five times that in Tidd’s survey (3.7 per cent).

That latter figure, by the way, more or less matches a report on the teaching and assessment of history by the QCA back in 2004/5. This stated that “about 4 per cent of curriculum time at key stages 1 and 2 is allocated to history”.

The starkness of these comparisons, then, would seem fully to underline a sense that parental concerns about the balance of the curriculum at the very least need external investigation, with Future needing to explain in detail why pupils are spending so much less time on STEM subjects.

For while history, of course, is important – and flagged up as being given priority on Future curriculum materials - so are maths, science, religious education, modern foreign languages, design and technology and computing. To single out one of those non-taught subjects, if pupils at these schools are getting no education at all in information technology, then a range of concerns about being at a disadvantage in the modern world would seem particularly relevant.

Although academies do not have to follow the national curriculum in detail, it also offers an interesting comparison, in terms of which subjects local authority maintained schools are required to offer. Alongside religious education – which is a teaching requirement of all schools including academies – the national curriculum unsurprisingly stipulates computing and design and technology as subjects also to be taught at key stage 2.  So these subjects are lacking from pupils’ education at Future’s primary schools, in contrast to the position in the non-academy maintained sector.

Religious education

I was very surprised to see no place at all for religious education on Millbank’s timetable. All schools, including academies, are required to teach the subject.

The mechanism for setting out this requirement is each academy’s funding agreement: the legal contract with the Secretary of State which sets out the basis on which they are paid by the government.

And, sure enough, the funding agreement for Millbank Academy stipulates that religious education must be taught. It says: “The Company [Future Academies] shall make provision for the teaching of religious education and for a daily act of collective worship at the Academy.”

Yet no religious education features on the school’s timetable. I understand that it has not been taught since a teacher of the subject left in 2020.

Controversy over the content of subject teaching

However, the curriculum controversy within the Future primary schools does not stop at the level of how much time is devoted to each subject per week.

There is also, I understand from sources who have experience of the school, a lot of unhappiness with the detailed content of what is being taught within subjects.

There seem two aspects to this: the overall approach and, it is claimed, the lack of ethnic minority perspectives. The latter is alleged despite, to repeat, Future’s London schools being overwhelmingly made up of ethnic minority pupils.

I spoke to a teaching source who has been close to the school. They took me through their concerns, starting with history.

They said: “The curriculum is completely lacking in diversity, with inappropriate content. The children have seven history lessons a week, four of which are ancient history, three of which are British history. It’s a very rigid curriculum so British history predominantly focuses on the Kings and Queens from the time of Augustine’s conversion…they start in year 3 with Britain’s conversion to Christianity and starting at the beginning of year 3, they are expected to write essays with regard to the Christianisation of England and from that point onwards they only learn about the leading figures – I don’t think there’s one aspect of cultural history put in the entire textbook, it’s purely political history, a history of each king and queen and what each king and queen has done during their reign.

“[Pupils are taught using] a British history textbook, written by [Future’s] curriculum centre. I think in the entire book which is I think roughly 290 pages, they have only one mention of anyone who wasn’t white in British history, which was Olaudah Equiano, and that is in a chapter on the abolition of slavery which is not preceded by a chapter on slavery, only on the abolition of slavery. To compound that, figures such as Oliver Cromwell are taught in quite a positive light and…there are a number of inappropriate tasks set for the children.

“So in an ancient history text, for example, there is a task you have to imagine that you are Seneca, planning to commit suicide and you are bleeding out in your bathtub and you are writing your note for your scribe to write down. That was one of the tasks for ancient history year six class.”

This is set out in a 126-page textbook on Ancient Rome, for teaching to children in years 3 to 6, seen by Education Uncovered. Under a “Creative Writing Task,” set for the chapter on Seneca, this states: “Imagine that you are Seneca, in the process of committing suicide, in AD 65. Write your final words to be dictated to your scribe before you immerse yourself in a hot bath and bleed to death.”

The text itself describes how Seneca had a “very drawn out, agonising death. Having failed to bleed to death, he then took poison, which also failed to kill him. Finally…he immersed himself in a hot bath and bled to death.”

Our source continued: “In year 6, the children are taught Antony and Cleopatra and there are references to whores and harlots. This has been raised [with management] by staff members teaching the content and it’s just fallen on deaf ears.”

The section of the textbook on Antony and Cleopatra does indeed include a reference to “a whore”, in a quote from Shakespeare’s play used to introduce the chapter. As with respect to Seneca, in a suggested “creative writing task” it also focuses on her suicide.

The text states: “Imagine that you are Cleopatra and that Antony has just died in your arms. You have now lost your kingdom and the great love of your life. Write your final thoughts as you prepare to take your own life.” (I asked charities for a reaction to this aspect of the story. You can read about that here).

A section on the British history textbook on St Augustine included a note that Pope Gregory, while walking through the marketplace in Rome, had “seen some slave boys with beautiful blond hair and angelic faces” and that he had been “very sad when he heard that these young slave boys were not Christians”. A parent source said they felt this was not appropriate.

It is not clear that all of these passages from the textbooks have been taught to pupils every year.  Education Uncovered understands that, in some cases, teachers have sought to avoid them. However, with staff under pressure through lesson observations from senior management, including during virtual lessons during lockdown, questions were being raised as to whether teachers could avoid teaching the material, even if they had misgivings.

The source added: “The geography textbook that pupils have is strictly European, there is not a single aspect to the geography that they learn from year three through to year six that has anything to do with anything outside of Europe.”

“They’ve inserted grammar and vocabulary tasks in the year six science curriculum, and essentially, all science experiments have been taken out. So all enquiry has been removed from the science curriculum. It’s essentially been turned into a history of science; [pupils] are learning about famous scientists and then answering questions that are usually either purely retrieval or, quite often, grammar-based.

“The overall approach is totally out of touch with contemporary society. The school did have IT and French and both of these subjects were removed. They were replaced with Latin and oracy. Even in oracy lessons, the children are discouraged from speaking: they have to write. It seems really out of touch with the 21^st century, especially since they got rid of IT.”

Summing up, the source said: “I don’t know one member of the teaching staff who is content with the curriculum that they teach. And that goes across every subject, from English, to maths, to science, to history, to geography.”

Another source, a former staff member, told me: “The approach in history is generally: ‘here is your textbook, this is what we are doing today, write this essay, complete this in your book’. In geography, it’s the same: everything written in the Future way. It’s all a bit dull and staid. The children [in this person’s experience] were not really allowed to move away from the texts they were given.”

Asked what was driving the approach, this source told me: “It’s just down to what the Nashes want. History is Caroline Nash’s pet passion. It’s well-known that she favours certain subjects over others.”

They added, of the Nashes’ influence: “It is quite bizarre, given that they are not educationists, they have never worked in a school. It’s a strange set-up.”

This source said even the emphasis on particular types of teaching approach within history was believed to stem from the Nashes. Remarkably, they said, this extended to key stage 1 children being asked to write essays. This former staff member was very sceptical.

They said: “Essay-writing in key stage 1, for example, it’s just…well it seems like more a secondary curriculum to me, with no differentiation whatsoever.

“Children who can’t write the basic words are given the same tasks as everyone else, to write an essay on whatever it is, Julius Caesar. Maybe it comes from someone who doesn’t know how a normal primary school operates. You get a couple of children who can do it, and then everyone shows that off and they say ‘you see, year 2 children can write an essay’, because one person in year 2 probably can. But I’m not sure how useful it is for the rest of the class.”

There have been claims that the work required of pupils can be overly-scaffolded, with Future compensating for the difficulty of the tasks facing children by providing detailed essay plans. One such outline, on Antony and Cleopatra, seen by Education Uncovered, includes bullet points highlighting possible points to mention in each of four paragraphs, followed by more generalised instructions for the conclusion.

Document may further illustrate controversy

Future’s website currently features a selection of texts which appear to feature in its teaching of various subjects.

Clicking on “British History” brings up a document called “Great events and people from British history”.

The title looks contentious enough to my far-from-expert eyes: is it a version of the “great man theory” of leadership, in which history is explained as the product of remarkable individuals, rather than on more complex causes?

On the contents page, a chronological list of chapters is then set out. In line with the comments by the first source above, these start with “Augustine’s mission” with the final chapter, number 12, being “The Trial and Execution of Charles I”.

The detailed content viewable within this pdf, however, is all on a single topic, on chapter 10: “The Spanish armada”.

This begins with a section on Elizabeth I which seems – again to my educated-to-history-A-level eyes– to be lacking in nuance.

It states: “Elizabeth I is usually regarded as one of England’s greatest monarchs. Her reign is seen as a golden age when art and literature flourished, trade boomed, and England enjoyed a long period of peace and stability after the religious turmoil of the previous two reigns. Elizabeth was Queen of England for forty-five years: from 1558 to 1603. Of all her achievements, the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 was the most spectacular. Elizabeth was eulogised afterwards as ‘Gloriana’, and she has gone down in history as the ever popular ‘Good Queen Bess’.”

It seems worth asking the question, here, whether Future’s pupils, if taught this, are being presented with a version of history decidedly lacking in texture and a sense of an alternative viewpoint.

For a vivid contrast, see this recent sample GCSE textbook on early Elizabethan England. Although Elizabeth herself is described as “highly intelligent and well educated,” pupils are reminded that life expectancy was in the range 28 to 41 and that hundreds of people were put to death for their religious beliefs in the first part of Elizabeth’s reign, in a text which comes at the period from multiple angles.

A recent course on the subject “Gloriana: the life and times of Elizabeth 1, 1533-1603” held at Cambridge University’s Institute of Continuing Education poses the question as to whether Elizabeth’s “image of herself embodying English victories and English power which has endured into the 21^st century” was merely “propaganda”.

But it is not only the historical content on view which seems contentious. So, according to sources with experience of the school and other experts spoken to by Education Uncovered, is what pupils are then asked to do with the information.

At the end of the text, there is a list of “key words and concepts,” followed by a second list, of “key people”.

Pupils then face a multiple-choice vocabulary test; a set of comprehension questions; a creative writing task in which they must imagine they are a sailor on a ship during the sailing of the armada and tell the story of what happened to them, and then, as Sir Francis Drake, write a report for Queen Elizabeth; and then given three essay tasks.

Our first source said: “British history, and ancient history, and geography are all taught in the same way: children answer comprehension questions one lesson, then they answer multiple-choice vocabulary questions the next lesson, and then they do an essay at the end of term.

“Even though the content of these books is quite sophisticated, the tasks are actually incredibly easy for children who have done them multiple times before. It’s just purely retrieval.”

They added that, while the essay-writing seemed ambitious, in fact children were expected to copy down from the board large parts of their extended writing tasks, with some essays being “glorified gap-filling exercises”.

One family member of a child whose parents decided to remove them from Millbank, for reasons including “high staff turnover”, offered a similar comment, unprompted. They told me “they [Millbank] continually encourage children to copy from the board for most lessons”.

I asked several experts for views on the approach to the teaching of history. Most seemed wary of going into too much detail, on the record. But Dr Lang, a senior lecturer in history at Anglia Ruskin University and fellow of the Historical Association, offered a detailed critique in which he described the sample texts viewable on Future's website as “limited and unambitious”, suggesting they were a throwback to his 1960s primary history education, when the world had moved on. He said there were better teaching resources available for history than those viewable on Future’s website. You can read his thoughts in full here.

Analysis: if parents and teachers have concerns, what can they do?

There seems little opportunity for an external, perhaps sceptical, perspective to gain purchase on this trust via official and unofficial accountability mechanisms, in relation to schools’ curriculum and timetable policies, given the way that inspections, government oversight and even parental choice currently work.

The evidence, both from local sources and from my scrutiny of official documentation, is that the Nashes, who set up Future Academies in 2008, are effectively in complete control of this largely state-funded organisation, which runs seven secondary schools alongside the three primaries.

They constitute two of the five current members of Future – with the right to appoint trustees – while Lord Nash is the trust’s chair and Lady Nash also serves on the board. The Nashes are the only trustees also serving as members. Other members have been associates of Lord Nash in the past.

According to latest information on its website, all three local “governing bodies” for the primaries are chaired by Future’s chief executive, Paul Smith, who of course as a Future employee was appointed through an employment process overseen by the board.

Prospectuses for the three primary schools say that the trust’s “curriculum centre” is “under the directorship of Lady Nash, who has contributed personally to the KS2 curriculum”.

According to these documents, the Key Stage 2 curriculum was “written by Lady Nash and the Curriculum Centre team”.

On the curriculum section of Future’s website, Lady Nash is described as “the leading force in curriculum development across the trust. Caroline has overseen the development of the…KS2 curriculum at the primaries.”

This brief biography also states: “Lady Nash has a BA in history from Bristol University. A stockbroker by training, she had a successful career in the international division of a French merchant bank.” There is no mention of any teaching qualifications.

Lady Nash is described here as “co-director” of Future’s curriculum centre, alongside Paul Smith, who is a former primary headteacher. Ten teachers are also listed as involved.

This may underline a point made to me back in 2012, when Future was in charge of only one school: Pimlico Academy, also in Westminster. One staff member had told me of multiple concerns about the Nashes’ conservative approach to the curriculum. “We all as professionals can disagree with what the Nashes want to do,” they told me. “But what can we do about it? It’s their project.”

Could Ofsted, especially given its recent emphasis on the curriculum, perhaps be exerting some pressure on this organisation, particularly given the conspicuous absence from its teaching of the subjects of religious education and computing?

Well, Millbank Academy was last inspected nearly eight years ago, in May 2013, which was in the first year of its joining Future. It has had an exemption having been rated “outstanding” at that time, though Ofsted recently told me that such schools are being prioritised for re-inspection when post-pandemic normality returns. Curriculum was barely mentioned in the 2013 report.

Pimlico Primary was also rated “outstanding” by Ofsted, this time back in June 2015 – the only time inspectors have visited since it opened as a free school in 2013. That report was very positive about the curriculum on offer, saying that it “excites and motivates pupils”, though at this school a modern language was then on offer, with Spanish among the subjects praised. Spanish, though, is not mentioned in the prospectus for the school currently viewable on its website.

Churchill Gardens is the most recently-inspected academy of the three, having been rated “good” following a visit in December 2019. The word “curriculum” did not feature, and there was no mention of the amount of time spent on individual subjects.

No Future Academy primary, including this school, was teaching computing/ICT at this time. But, staggeringly I think, there was no mention of this by the single-person inspection team in his report on Churchill Gardens for the inspectorate. Why would Ofsted not be tracking, and reporting on, what pupils were being taught, and what they were not, it is possible to wonder.

Subject teaching at this school was, though, praised, the inspector writing: “The work in pupils’ books is of a high quality. This includes, for example, a detailed understanding of historical figures they have learned about. Pupils achieve exceptionally well in a range of subjects,” though on the latter point, Sats “progress” results were reported by the DfE as broadly average in 2019.

If any recent examination by Ofsted of the balance of subject teaching at these schools seems absent at least from the public record, some might wonder whether the Department for Education itself might exert influence, especially if some subjects are not being taught.

I have yet to put this point to the DfE. However, many readers might be sceptical about the willingness of the department to do so, given Lord Nash’s position as a former minister and Conservative peer and donor, who is currently also serving as the “lead non-executive director” across the entire government.

The schools, not far from the Houses of Parliament, have also benefited from visits by at least one high-profile politician. According to its website, Boris Johnson said that Pimlico Primary was the “best school he had ever visited” during a visit in 2019 – when, again, it featured no ICT provision -  having been “bowled over by our high-quality, knowledge-rich curricula”.

Given the schools’ undoubted emphasis on the classics, in relation to which the Prime Minister is a known enthusiast and graduate, perhaps this was not surprising.  

Also perhaps unsurprisingly, given that Future’s description of its curriculum as “knowledge-rich” chimes with the government’s own preference for such approaches, the chain has received official endorsement and funding from the DfE on this front.

As I reported in 2019, Pimlico Academy was one of only three primaries in England at the time reported to be taking part in a trial of “complete curriculum programmes”, in which academies were receiving up to £150,000 for a single subject to experiment with the roll-out of “knowledge-rich” curriculum resources to a group of at least six partner schools. Pimlico was running trials in history and geography.

As I wrote last week, Millbank was also featured in three “sponsored” pieces in right-of-centre newspapers about primary schools’ return after lockdown, seemingly offered to them to the Department for Education.

So if parents and teachers are concerned, and if official channels to investigate those concerns seem not to be encouraging, what other mechanism might exert – if you like - from-the-ground-up pressure on what seems an to-all-intents-and-purposes privately-controlled organisation?

The quasi-market mechanism through which family concerns might find an outlet would be parental choice. If families were unhappy, could they not vote with their feet?

Well, the debate about parental choice will often stress how difficult changing schools can be for children: this is not an easy option for families. The local situation may underline this, in relation to Future’s primaries.

For Future’s three primaries have a virtual monopoly of state-funded primary provision in the area of Pimlico in Westminster where they all sit, at least as far as non-faith provision goes. When I do a search, for example, on the DfE’s database on primary schools near Lupus Street, the home of Pimlico Primary, other than church schools the two closest other primaries coming up are Churchill Gardens and Millbank Academy.

That said, despite the three Future schools’ very positive Ofsted records, and official endorsement from the government when it has come, pupil numbers still appear to be a challenge.

Millbank primary had only 330 pupils at the time of the last published DfE school census, in January 2020. This is 27 per cent down on the 450 it had in 2012, its last year as a community school before joining Future.

Churchill Gardens has seen pupil numbers decline by a similar amount over the same period: down from 290 in 2012 to 213 last year, another 27 per cent fall.

Pimlico Primary, as a free school, was not open in 2012. But in 2020 it had 289 pupils. With 60 pupils allowed per year group, according to Westminster’s admissions brochure, the school may not have been operating at capacity.

It is true that these schools are far from the only ones in the borough to have seen struggles for pupil numbers in recent years – well over three quarters of those with data for both 2012 and 2020 had seen a fall in their rolls over this period, by my analysis, and Millbank and Churchill Gardens had only the eighth and ninth highest decline in pupil numbers among 39 primaries. However, it seems from the evidence that the Future primaries at least have not been attracting parents in huge numbers through their very distinctive approach.

I sent a detailed email to Future about the above. I asked it about the overall curriculum balance as set out above and also mentioned: the fact that computing/ICT and religious studies were not being taught, despite the latter being a requirement of Future primary schools’ funding agreement; that concerns had been raised about the quality of textbooks; and that the exercises mentioning suicide also looked concerning, too.

As if to underline concerns about the lack of accountability of this trust, there was no response.

This saga seems of great public interest, with implications for understandings of education reform over the past 20 years, so my investigations will continue.

*I have only seen detailed timetables for Millbank. But I understand the provision in the two other primary schools is broadly similar.

**Tidd’s survey had findings for each national curriculum year, with only a minority of survey responses relating to year five specifically. However, the position for year five is not vastly different from that in other national curriculum years, so the figure of 550 responses overall seems relevant to this comparison.