Furious parents demand answers after transfer of funds by Wakefield City Academies Trust leaves pupils forced to recycle old exercise books
“I want my children to have the education I didn’t get,” says Josie Farrar, 46, who has two children at Freeston Academy in Normanton, West Yorkshire.
Her children had been back at school for two days at the start of term in September when parents had a letter saying the academy trust that managed Freeston and 20 other schools across Yorkshire was disbanding. “That was a real worry for me. One of my sons is in year 11 and the other in year nine. Year 11 is an important year, as it’s his GCSE year.”
Wakefield City Academies Trust now stands accused of “asset stripping” after it transferred millions of pounds of the schools’ savings to its own accounts before collapsing. On 8 September it released a statement announcing it would divest itself of its 21 schools as it could not undertake the “rapid improvement our academies need”. It said that new sponsors would be found to take them over.
