A membership organisation for academy trusts took on one of the country’s most senior lawyers for a potential legal challenge of the government’s ill-fated schools bill, its leader has revealed.
Leora Cruddas, chief executive of the Confederation of School Trusts, told the annual conference of school leaders’ union ASCL yesterday that producing the bill before a review of trust regulation was a “huge legislative error”.
The schools bill, published last May, proposed new academy standards and sweeping additional powers over schools. By June it had already been watered-down following widespread criticism and a rebellion of Conservative peers. In December, it was ditched.
The CST was highly-critical of the schools bill, calling it an “extraordinary over-reach and centralisation of power”.
