Council asked to approve plans for new Telford multi-academy trust

Hadley Learning Community is looking to form the new trust, and would absorb Mount Gilbert School, Queensway HLC School, a school which provides special education, and Charlton Secondary School.

Information provided to parents by the Charlton School says: "The Department of Education strongly supported a proposal and has approved that a multi-academies trust is established in this part of Telford, where schools are located close together and where school-to-school support is already in place.

"The new MAT will be the Learning Community Trust.

"Following HLC's application to be an academy and sponsor, LCT is now being established. Charlton School and Mount Gilbert have academy orders in place to be sponsored by LCT and these changes can come into place from September 1 2017."

It adds that the move will provide "great opportunities" for both students and staff.

It says: "By being part of the Learning Community Trust from the outset we can have influence on our own destiny – the local authority is unable to support schools as it used to due to constant and significant budget cuts."

Each school will operate independently under a shared Learning Community Trust board, with each head teacher having responsibility for their school, under HLC principal Dr Gill Eatough, who will be executive principal of the HLC and the trust.

The HLC, on Waterloo Road in Hadley, is an all-through school for children from the ages of five to 16.

It already operates as an academy with a private finance initiative, where private sector investment is used to pay for it, but the responsibility for the contract and monitoring still remains with Telford & Wrekin Council, and will do so until 2034 to 2035.

The council will need to ensure that the transfer agreement for HLC ensures that the academy contributes an annual sum due from its budget towards PFI costs so that the council can continue to meet its obligations in terms of funding PFI over the contract period, which runs until 2034 to 2035.

The academy trust will lease back The Bridge Special School, its the leisure facilities and the ABC private nursery, children’s centres and other ancillary areas back to Telford & Wrekin Council, where they will be managed as now.

The council's cabinet is being asked, at its meeting on Thursday, to delegate powers to the assistant director for education and corporate parenting to facilitate the move.

It comes after the council's cabinet agreed in its June meeting to charge schools a cost between £4,500 and £6,500 to cover the administrative costs of academy conversions.

The money will come from £25,000 grants given to schools who want to become academies.