Academy application for St James Primary School

The Hattersley Primary School’s governing body has recently applied for an academy order.

The school is considering joining the Corpus Christi Catholic Academy Trust. The governing body is now consulting, until Thursday 19th June 2025, on whether the school’s conversion to academy status should take place.

St James is hoping to become an academy school by September 2025.

An academy is essentially an independent school which is funded by the state. It is independent of the local authority and receives its funding direct from central government.

Some of the benefits of becoming an academy that St James outlines in a letter are:

• As academies are independent of local authority control, they have more freedom about how they conduct themselves

• Academies receive their funding direct from central government which means schools receive more funding

• Academies have more freedom over the curriculum taught

• Academies can set their own pay and conditions of service for their staff, subject to normal employment law protections for staff

• Academies have more freedom to undertake innovative projects

One of the disadvantages that St James mentions is that once the school has converted. There is currently no route to revert back to being a maintained school. Academy conversion is a permanent change.

The school state: “we are very proud of our wonderful school and its rich history. We are passionate about retaining our school’s ethos and the feeling of belonging to a family school, with strong parish links. For pupils, it is unlikely that they will see much, if any, changes in their day-to-day school lives. We do not intend to change the school except in ways which we think will improve the school even more. Academies do have the power to vary their curriculum and vary the length of the school day; however, it is not intended to take such steps at this stage and would engage with parents/ carers, staff and pupils if we did ever intend to make such changes in the future.”

There will be a meeting held for more information on Monday 12th May 2025 at 2:45pm in the school hall.

For any more information about the possible change please visit St James website http://www.st-james-hyde.tameside.sch.uk/