The National Education Trust will close this year, but the academy chain it operates will continue.
The trust, established in 2006 to support school improvement, confirmed it had transferred its assets to the NET Academies Trust and that it will close in the next three to six months.
According to the Education Uncovered website, the news was revealed in an email from the office of Sue Baldwin, the regional schools commissioner for the east of England and north-east London, to a parent saying the trust “has been wound up and will no longer be a sponsor of NET academies”.
In a statement, NET said its recent school improvement activities have “increasingly been at the academy level” and trustees had concluded it was “not necessary or cost-effective to keep the separate charity going, particularly as there has been a marked decrease in NET’s income in recent years”.
All “remaining assets and activities” have been transferred to NET Academies Trust and trustees “are now putting in place arrangements to formally wind up NET”.
The charity’s latest accounts, covering the period to March 2017, warned NET was “experiencing a period of significant challenge as a result of material changes to the education services marketplace, the impending departures of key members of staff and the absence of a substantive CEO”.
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