It has been officially revealed, to a point anyway, that there is a plan ‘B’ in reserve for the academy debacle. So what is plan ‘B’?

Plan ‘B’ as we understand it will mean the existing schools remain open as they are now. These schools will then be put in to trust status, meaning that they are effectively joined together but operate as single entities. A trust school operates under very similar if not identical rules as an academy. It takes control of the land up until the point it does not need it, the land then passes back to the local authority. It also does not need to follow the rules applied to an LEA school in that behaviour policies can be bypassed to allow easy expulsions and data not made public. It also allows it to make its’ own decisions on who it allows in.

Walney and George Hastwell are on this road also, the information we have is that this would prevent them being forced to take pupils expelled from the academy, which they would have been forced to do under LEA control!

“Woohoo” people will say, “we beat the idiots in Carlisle”

But have they? No. Well not really, if they let a trust go ahead. To a point in the short term things will stay the same which is good for the kids going in to years 10 & 11 especially. It will probably prevent a major upheaval for the kids being uprooted and thrown in to the unknown. In the longer term though it will give one entity the control over all of the sites allowing the council to take back the land as and when it is not required by the trust. The funding on such a scheme is unknown so it could mean the current buildings staying as they are, hence the investment bribe is gone yet the council still gets its own way.

Is it a better option then? In the short term it will probably be better for current pupils but in the long term the county get the land they want and a one site school will probably be the outcome.