Calday Grange Grammar School (320)
ONE of Wirral’s leading schools has said its new Trust status means it will work closely with one of the largest private companies in the borough.
Calday Grange Grammar School in West Kirby has become the first Trust School in Wirral.
Its new status will allow the school to establish long-term, sustainable relationships with its partner organisations, which include the University of Liverpool, Unilever and Maestro Services Ltd.
Andrew Hall, headmaster at Calday, said: "The establishment of the Trust will provide opportunities for developing new and innovative approaches to learning, promoting high aspirations and expectations for all and enhancing our dynamic and challenging curriculum."
Earlier this week it was announced that private firms and not-for-profit groups will help run a further four Merseyside schools in a huge expansion of the sometimes controversial scheme to drive up standards.
The four – Hilbre High School Humanities College, West Kirby, Woodchurch High School, Wirral, Crosby High School, and Cowley Language College, St Helens, – will all become "trust" schools.
Woodchurch High School had immediately announced that Maestro Services Ltd, a Liverpool-based not-for-profit company providing science and technology projects for schools across the region, would also be its partner in the trust.
The move is designed to improve exam results by introducing innovation, freeing the schools from direct control of the local education authority.
Trust schools – there are already 124 across England – are often described as private schools within the state system, because they are allowed to develop their own ethos and withdraw from the local council network of schools.
Last night Wirral Council’s cabinet member for education, Cllr Phil Davies, said several schools were seeking to change their status to foundations or trusts, but he said: "Whatever status a school has I’m keen to continue the good relationship we have, and I know that will continue with Calday."
Foundation schools normally take ownership of the assets, such as land and buildings, from the LEA and have more independence in their management and appointing staff, with Trusts being similar but including their outside partners in the governance of the school.