A 15-school academy trust will shut after the government decided to strip it of its only secondary, further revealing the “vulnerability” of primary schools amid the double whammy of rising costs and falling rolls.
The Diocese of Bristol Academies Trust (DBAT) will hand over its schools to new trusts after the Deanery School, its secondary in Swindon, was rated “inadequate.”
Ministers decided the secondary should be rebrokered, leaving the trust facing a fundamental restructure of its central team if it were to continue operating, said DBAT’s CEO Stephen Mitchell.
He said: “We decided that in the medium term there were other trusts that could have run our schools with more capacity without going through the pain of a restructure. It was a very mature governance discussion that took place.”
