High-performing academy trusts are being encouraged to grow and support more schools across England, supported by £17 million announced by the Education Secretary Damian Hinds.

The Trust Capacity Fund will be used by high performing academy trusts to build on rising standards in sponsored academy schools, by ensuring they can provide support to communities and schools that need it most.

Alongside this, the Government is setting out more details on a new package of support, worth an estimated £16.5million, to support 2,400 underperforming schools to improve their leadership.

Recent figures show that there are 380,000 children now studying in ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ sponsored academies that were previously underperforming council-run schools – and that 7 in 10 previously under-performing schools, have been rated ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ by Ofsted since becoming an academy – compared to 1 in 10 under local authority control.

Education Secretary, Damian Hinds said: “Strong academy trusts across the country are already supporting schools in many of the communities that need it the most and this funding will help this to happen in even more areas.

“Academies are at the heart of our reforms to education and just last week new data revealed that the last year has seen 80,000 more children studying in good or outstanding sponsored academies that were previously run by local authorities which is why we must continue to give these charitable institutions the opportunity to turn around more schools.”

Launching in September and providing funding until the end of the financial year, the government says the Trust Capacity fund will:

• Support strong academy trusts across the country to provide assistance to communities and schools are most in need of school improvement

• Provide high-potential academy trusts, who have emerging capacity to improve other schools, with funding to meet challenges associated with taking on more schools in different contexts as they develop, deploy school improvement support quickly across a trust, and support collaboration between schools.

• Support smaller academy trusts that wish to merge into existing or new academy trusts, creating new clusters of schools

The Department for Education has also set out a package of bespoke support that will be available for schools with a ‘requires improvement’ judgement from Ofsted, from expert education leaders who will provide them with tailored support and advice from National Leaders of Education to help them improve.

A more intensive offer of leadership guidance, plus up to £16,000 in support, will be available to schools with two consecutive ‘requires improvement’ judgements from Ofsted, to help them improve in a sustainable way, forming part of an estimated £16.5million worth of support from the Government to around 2,400 schools nationwide.

The Department will be contacting schools throughout the 2019/20 academic year to offer this support package.

Image by Steve Buissinne from Pixabay