Bishop's Castle schools consider options

Parents, staff and governors at schools with the South West Shropshire Learning Trust – which work together but are not an academy trust – gathered for a two hour meeting to hear possible options for the future in Bishop's Castle.

About 50 people with primary schools from the area, and secondary school the Community College, spent two and half hours hearing and talking about a decision which could radically change how each is run, funded and works together i the coming years.

Options presented at the meeting were joining a newly proposed county-wide Shropshire Education Trust, separate from Shropshire Council but backed by it, or joining the Ludlow-based Bishop Anthony Educational Trust, or BAET, which is linked to the Diocese of Hereford.

Bishop's Castle Primary School previously expressed interest in joining BAET but governors were persuaded to hold off on a decision to hear other options.

Jim Sparkes, chairman of governors at the Community College in Bishop's Castle, said: "Shropshire Education Trust and BAET are two of the options that the governing bodies of the South West Shropshire Learning Trust schools have in front of them.

"The key thing for us is that, really, this is the most important decision that we are going to make for the future because it will change the nature of our schools and it's not reversible.

"It's not a beauty contest. We've got to put our own preferences and prejudges on one side and look at things objectively to make the best decision for our children.

"There is a huge amount of work now to do to go through it and we as governors have got to really rigorously look at every aspect of these multi-academy trusts."

He said as they went through the process the Community College would be happy to share information with their feeder schools – but they were not going to tell any other school what decision to make.

He said questions from the floor included concerns about smaller primary schools that did not meet the requirements of big multi-academy trusts getting left behind.

"There is a concern that some of them might be left out in the cold," he said.

Schools were assured that, despite BAET being linked to the Church of England, the trust would not put pressure on member schools to adopt a particular approach to religious education, and was in fact barred from doing so.

However, he said it was now a matter of going through a long process of looking at each option on offer before committing to anything.