Moulsecoomb Primary: council calls on government to cancel academy plan

Brighton & Hove City Council has written to the government’s Secretary of State for Education to ask him to use his powers to cancel plans to turn Moulsecoomb Primary School into an academy.

Councillors from all political parties on the council’s children, young people and skills committee recently voted unanimously to oppose the academy order, which was issued by the Regional Schools Commissioner for the south east.

Committee chair Councillor Nick Childs said: “The council’s education team has an outstanding record of school support and improvement.

This success is based on a detailed knowledge of our education community, and strong partnership working with our family of schools across the city.

We are confident that we can do a much better job of rapidly improving the school than any academy chain.

The idea that academisation is the best way to improve schools is a myth.

Recent research by the Local Government Association shows that councils improve failing schools almost twice as fast as academy trusts.

The school is making good progress under its current leadership with the support of our education team and other local schools.

They have already made a number of improvements, and we’re confident that this year’s SATs results and other measures will show even more progress.

We believe strongly that this process needs to be allowed to continue.

Converting the school to an academy is unnecessary and would in our view be highly disruptive and damaging to pupils at the school.