The government has unveiled plans to expand, merge or create new multi-academy trusts in 55 priority areas in a bid to improve under-performing schools.
Department for Education (DfE) bosses believe their approach, set out in new “trust development statements”, will boost attainment in left-behind towns and counties – where as many as one in five primaries and secondaries have been ordered to improve by Ofsted.
It comes after academies minister Baroness Barran told Schools Week the government will ramp up its use of powers to strip trusts of groups of underperforming academies en-masse.
Government officials want leaders to either expand trusts or launch new ones in “education investment areas” (EIAs), which are said to have the nation’s weakest Key Stage 2 and GCSE results.
