Shropshire Star

Telford academy trust: What went wrong

On paper, the record of Telford Co-operative Multi Academy Trust (TCMAT) does not make for good reading.

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When it was formed in 2013, to take over the running and management of four newly-formed academies in the town, the future looked bright.

Three of the schools – Sutherland Co-operative Academy, Wrockwardine Wood Arts Academy and Lakeside Academy – had all received lavish praise and "good" Ofsted ratings in their last inspections before conversion.

Wrockwardine Wood Arts Academy, in New Road, Telford

The fourth – Phoenix Academy – was rated "requires improvement" but inspectors noted it seemed to be moving in the right direction.

Millions of pounds has been invested in new builds at Lakeside and Phoenix, with Sutherland and Wrockwardine Wood set to merge in the summer and move on to an equally impressive new site to become the Telford Co-operative Academy.

The aim of the new trust was simple – to turn all four schools into "outstanding" ones.

Instead, to the bemusement of those looking on from the outside, the opposite has happened.

Poor GCSE results last summer pricked the ears of the Government watchdog, and three and four-strong teams of inspectors descended on the four schools for two-day visits in February to see what was going on.

Their conclusions, made public in reports released to the public this month, make for difficult reading for anyone involved with the schools.

All four received the worst possible rating of "inadequate" and, as a result, were all placed in special measures meaning even stricter monitoring from Whitehall in the future.

So, what went wrong?

Peter Lawley, chairman of TCMAT, said the board went into it with "the best of intentions" but admitted things had not worked out.

He said the task of running four academy schools was "just too big" for the group of volunteer directors tasked with it.

Mr Lawley said he hoped the new sponsors – the Communities Academy Trust (CAT) – would be able to "achieve the vision that the existing trust had been unable to fulfil".

He said: "I keep reading people saying 'sack all the directors, they don't deserve paying'.

"What they don't realise is we are just volunteer lay directors, that's part of the problem.

"This has been pretty much a full-time job for me since September, and I haven't received a penny for it.

"The board was made up of people who sat on the governing bodies of the schools concerned. Each of the chairs became directors.

"Two reps from each governing body were on the board.

"It was lay constituted, some had an educational background, some didn't.

"We all went into it with the best of intentions, with our eyes wide open, and we all hoped it would work.

"We are not seeking to say Ofsted are wrong, or to make excuses. The results may not have been the best in the world.

"But you had four schools coming together, two rebuilds, and two of those schools merging.

"We were tasked with bringing together structures for commercial finance, budgets, systems across the patch, and that was an immense task.

"Bringing schools together to work co-operatively really was complex.

"You are talking about trying to bring together four massively different structures, at a time when there was financial issues with falling rolls.

"Because of falling rolls you don't get as much money, because you haven't got as much money you can't employ the teachers you might like to employ – its a death spiral of failure.

"Unfortunately, despite the best intentions from everybody, the job was just too big for volunteer lay directors to cope with.

"I do think there was the best of intentions, genuinely. Everyone went into it with their eyes open to secure the stability of the schools.

"But we didn't have the capacity to take things forward.

"TCMAT pays tribute to the very hard working staff, governing bodies and lay directors who have contributed so much since the inception of the trust.

"We are naturally very disappointed that the outcomes for students and communities, despite their best efforts, have not been better.

"A proposed new sponsor for all four schools has now been identified, and is already working with the trust in order to achieve the vision that the existing trust has been unable to fulfil.

"The sponsor will take over the schools from September."

Mr Lawley said the situation in Telford was also "unique" compared to other areas of the country where similar trusts have been set up and flourished.

"A multi-academy trust will usually have at least one school which is rated as 'outstanding' which acts as the lead school to support and enable all the other schools to come up to strength," he said.

"In this case we didn't have an outstanding school, we had three good ones and one which was requires improvement. Phoenix had been in 'requires improvement' since 2012.

"Three out of the four schools were suffering with falling rolls and the economies of scale.

"I think here in Telford & Wrekin, I think its a unique situation. We had no outstanding school lead. We had two new school rebuilds and falling rolls to battle against.

"Add all that together and it is almost impossible for a team of volunteer lay directors to deal with that and a structure and lead it forward and make it a success.

"We did the thing back to front, brought the schools together, created the trust, and then started talking about structures. We should have made sure the structures were in place from the start.

"We didn't even appoint a finance officer until June 2014, we had already been running a year by then."

The chairman admitted it had been too big an ask for non-professionals – but hit out at claims he and the board were not qualified to lead the schools.

He said: "I have been a governor at schools for 25 years or more, sometimes at church schools, sometimes other schools.

"Stirchley School, Lord Silkin School, I moved to St Georges and became a governor at St Georges School. I was very proud that school received an "outstanding" rating while I was there, so I can't be that bad can I?

"I have got school governor experience over a long period of time.

"But the world has changed.

"The Government agenda now is that schools should no longer be managed by lay people, the public, and that instead they should be run by experts.

"Until a few years ago it was parents, teachers, senior people in the community, who gave their time. Now the Government wants it to be educationalists who are running schools.

"What I would say is – where are these experts going to come from?

"It's like people saying we need to sack the headteachers of these academies and get new ones in, like its the easiest thing in the world.

"Where do they think these headteachers are going to come from?

"We were distracted by the setting up of the TCMAT. We took our eye off the ball.

"We aren't looking to make excuses.

"We are not blaming teachers, heads, pupils, parents or anybody.

"We just want to make people aware of the challenges we were facing.

"We put our hands up and admit it didn't work. Now it is time to move on and try something else.

"By September I expect TCMAT to be dissolved and wound up, and the schools will have a good future to look forward to."

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