AS a parent of children in SBMAT, including Scarcroft, I read with alarm that our governing board felt compelled to resign. Scarcroft is an excellent school with strong leadership, and, until now, a committed and talented governing board. It is an indictment on SBMAT that the Scarcroft Governors are described as ‘hostile’ for doing their job of questioning and supporting leadership.

Parents at Scarcroft and other SBMAT schools have been raising concerns since November 2022 with the CEO and the Trust’s board. The fire and rehire of 43 teaching assistants across the six schools meant the loss of many experienced staff who could not afford to continue in post. The damage to staff morale from this and other changes resulted in an unprecedented loss of teachers in the secondary schools. Cynically, these moves were instigated by the Trust just after Ofsted completed inspections.

The contracts were changed without considering their effects on children with special needs. SBMAT has failed to provide evidence in response to freedom of information requests that it conducted due diligence in its decision-making. SBMAT Trustees did not provide effective scrutiny and failed in their duty of care towards students.

It is deeply concerning that not only have the CEO and Chair of SBMAT refused to meet with parents, we now have no Governors to support Scarcroft School and hold SBMAT to account. SBMAT is increasingly unaccountable to the community it is supposed to serve: this is well below the expectations and standards we expect.

Dr Aoibheann Kilfeather,

Wentworth Road,

York

... OVER 18 months I have become increasingly concerned about the behaviour, and lack of accountability of SBMAT; particularly its central leadership team.

Alarm-bells are ringing for various reasons; the current CEO, Mark Hassack’s performance at previous trusts and lack of real-world experience to lead an academic institution, the fire and rehire of TAs over the last year, and of course most recently the resignation of the entire Local Governance Board.

The fire and rehire of teaching staff is a significant problem, and when the community came together to discuss the issue, SBMAT’s response was, “This is not a public consultation and therefore any opinions from a public forum will not be considered as part of the process.” [The Press, December 3, 2022].

I remind Mark Hassack that we are not “a public forum” – we are key stakeholders in his ‘business’. He must acknowledge that. He needs to understand that we entrust SBMAT with our children’s education, and if he and his ‘directors’ continue to show the same level of contempt for us that they have over the last 18 months, there is likely to be an exodus of pupils in coming years.

SBMAT states that it strives for: “Excellence for staff”, recognises that it’s in our kids’ best interest to “recruit and retain the best staff”, believes in, “Improvement through collaboration”, and refers to “Community”. How can a parent be expected to believe any of this when the actions of SBMAT are so demonstrably to the contrary?

Jeremy Russell Appleyard

Grove View,

Clifton Green, York

...THE decision by the Governing body of Scarcroft Primary School to resign en masse (The Press, September 14) in support of Jonny Crawshaw signals a very sad day for the education system. They should not have been put in a position where they felt that this was necessary.

The fact that a governor of a school - any governor - is not allowed to express honestly felt opinions about the running of a school without being found in breach of some arbitrary "code of conduct", is utterly regrettable and a restriction on free speech. This effectively leaves academy chains exempt from criticism by the very people appointed to have oversight of the running of the school.

A few academy chains are good and raise standards, but many are ineffective and a gravy train for the management to pay themselves high salaries. At the moment, academisation is a one-way process. There should be (but currently isn't) a mechanism by which parents can have the power to force a school in an academy chain to switch to another academy chain of their choice or revert to local authority control. That would force some academy chains to up their game.

Tony Fisher,

Liberal Democrat councillor for Strensall ward,

West End,

Strensall, York