More than half of Lincolnshire’s schools are classed as academy status

A report before the Lincolnshire Schools’ Forum next Thursday shows that 189 of Lincolnshire’s 363 schools – 52.1 per cent – are in academy trusts.

Even more significantly, a total of 79,113 full-time education pupils are taught by academies – 72.8 per cent of students.

The Lincolnshire trust with the most schools is the Lincoln Anglican Academy Trust which oversees 20 schools and more than 4,000 pupils.

This is closely followed by the Community Inclusive Trust and the Priory Federation of Academies with 12 schools each – the latter teaching 7,474 pupils, while the former oversees the education of 2,130.

There are 35 multi-academy trusts in Lincolnshire with a total of 152 schools members of multi-academy trusts.

There are 37 single-academy trusts.

The largest national trusts with schools in Lincolnshire are Academies Enterprise Trust (57 academies nationally, two in Lincolnshire), Greenwood Academies Trust (35 and seven), and The David Ross Education Trust (34 and eight).

The report notes four schools have recently been identified as requiring conversion to sponsored academy status after Ofsted judged them as requiring improvement at two successive inspections.

They are: Cowbit St Mary’s CE Primary School, Digby CE Primary School, Skegness The Richmond Primary School and Willoughby St Helena CE Primary School.

However, it said no sponsors had yet been appointed.

Government ambitions have previously caused concerns for Lincolnshire’s schools.

A government white paper last year was looking to set a 2030 deadline for schools to join an academy trust though there are no levers to make this happen except if the school receives one ‘inadequate’ or two ‘requires improvement’ grades.

Lincolnshire County Council’s Children and Young People Scrutiny Committee heard in July 2022 that the “one size fits all plan” might cause problems in rural areas.

The target was reported to have been dropped earlier this year along with a request for most multi-academy trusts to work towards serving 10 schools or 7,500 pupils.