Academy trust warned it must improve or be ousted

The Department for Education (DfE) has threatened to oust the trust that runs a school ranked as needing "significant improvement".

Ofsted had concluded that pupils at Neale-Wade Academy in March, Cambridgeshire, were consistently underachieving.

On Friday, the DfE warned the Active Learning Trust, which runs the school, that it had until 5 June to set out how it would make "rapid and sustainable" change.

The trust told the BBC it was committed to providing high-quality education and that progress was already happening "at pace".

According to Ofsted, 1,222 pupils attended the school as of January.

It was sent a termination warning notice by the Jonathan Duff, the DfE's regional director in the East of England.

"I need to be satisfied that the trust has capacity to deliver rapid and sustainable improvement at the academy," he wrote.

"If I am not satisfied that this can be achieved, I will consider whether to terminate the academy's funding agreement in order to transfer the academy to an alternative academy trust."

The main concern raised by Ofsted after its inspection in January was about poor pupil performance "over a sustained period of time".

Inspectors found "historical weaknesses" in the curriculum and said: "Many pupils do not achieve well."

However, it was noted new leaders had started to drive change and there was a good safeguarding culture.

The school confirmed it had received the letter and said it was writing to parents to update them.

A spokesman for the Active Learning Trust said it was confident its "robust and thoughtful" plan would pay dividends.

"We are committed to providing an excellent education and learning experience across all our schools and Neale-Wade's recent Ofsted report clearly pointed to the improvements and progress that have already been made," they added.

"We know that there is more work to be done and we have continued to make meaningful progress and improvements since our inspection in January."

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