MAT Update

Hello everyone

I hope you are all having a good start to the new academic year.  Here is an update on progress with our plans to form a new multi-academy trust (MAT) to meet the needs of young people across East Riding, North Lincolnshire and Hull. 

The five founder settings, The Riverview Family of Schools comprising of Baysgarth School and Castledyke Primary School in Barton upon Humber; The Market Weighton School and Market Weighton Infant School in Market Weighton; and Wyke Sixth Form College in Hull, consulted on our approach back in the spring. Following this, our governing boards approved our application to form a new MAT which was submitted to the Department for Education in April. You can see a summary of our plans, the consultation report and other key documents on our website: www.thewlt.co.uk. 

We had hoped that we might receive approval for the application before the summer break. However, the unexpectedly early general election meant that government departments stopped much of their work, including considering new MAT applications. We are in regular communication with the department who will pick up our case as soon as the new administration’s approach to academisation is confirmed. Given this delay, we have updated our project timeline to plan for forming the new multi-academy trust in April 2025. 

In the meantime, we are cracking on with developing our plans to ensure that the new trust is the best it can be. From this September, a team of staff, including myself, has been established to focus on the academisation project. We are working on a range of aspects including: 

• Spending time in each of the settings to fully understand how they currently operate and using this to inform our plans for how our provision can be further developed through the collaborative work of the trust. 
• Establishing our new governance arrangements. We are very pleased to have a great range of volunteers with fantastic experience and skill to contribute to the governance of the new trust, you can see their details at www.thewlt.co.uk.
• Working through all the operational detail related to finance, systems and staff. We are confident there will be significant benefits to the schools working together, both in their localities and across the trust.

The leaders of the settings continue to meet regularly to oversee the development of these plans and to share best practice. 

I have learnt so much already from my first two weeks of visiting each school and their fantastic staff. I will keep you all updated as we go through the term.

Please do get in touch if you have any questions about the project or if you have any suggestions about how we can make it even better. 

Paul 

Proposed CEO of the Wyke Learning Trust

paul.britton@wyke.ac.uk