An academy in Norfolk could have its funding terminated over concerns about its performance, but the government’s warning has only just been published, more than nine months after it was sent.
The Department for Education has today published a termination warning notice for King’s Lynn Academy, exactly nine months and six days after it was issued to the school, in what appears be a new record for delays to published warning notices.
The notice warns the school, which is part of the CWA Academy Trust, that it will lose its funding and end up rebrokered to another sponsor if it does not improve its performance. The school was placed in special measures by Ofsted last November.
The letter is dated February 2, but has only just been made public on the DfE’s website.
This not the first time the government has left long gaps between issuing and publishing its academy warning notices. Last month, the DfE published a termination warning notice issued to Wayland Academy Norfolk in mid-July.
The DfE has also been accused of trying to avoid bad publicity about academy chains by releasing pre-termination warning notices in batches, late in the day and just before a national holiday.
On a Thursday in April last year, at 5.37pm one day before the bank holiday weekend, the DfE released 13 pre-termination warning notices that had been issued two to three months earlier.
In his letter to King’s Lynn Academy in February, Tim Coulson, then the regional schools commissioner for the east of England, asked the trust to submit written representations while he made a decision on “whether to terminate the funding agreement”.
No further update has been provided.
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