Education provider for excluded Peterborough pupils taken over by academy trust

Peterborough’s Pupil Referral Unit (PRU) joined the Thomas Deacon Education Trust (TDET) last Friday and has been renamed the Richard Barnes Academy in honour of the trust’s founding chair of trustees.

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Peterborough education provider for excluded children rated ‘Inadequate’

The PRU received an ‘Inadequate’ Ofsted rating in May 2019 with inspectors stating the service was too stretched and wrong information was held on pupil attendance.

It was also said that governors held an “overgenerous view of the quality of education” because they had been given inaccurate information.

As a result Peterborough City Council, which handed over the management of the service in November 2017 to an independent governing body, took it back under its control.

Ofsted has since carried out a monitoring report which acknowledged improvements were being made.

The PRU provides specialist primary and secondary education for pupils in the city aged 4-16 who have been permanently excluded from school, or who are at risk of permanent exclusion.

The school, which is run from three centres, aims to successfully integrate as many of these pupils as possible back into mainstream education.

Following approval from the Department for Education, it has now joined the TDET which currently runs city schools Thomas Deacon Academy, Queen Katharine Academy, Gladstone Primary Academy and Welbourne Primary Academy.

Dr Barnes, who the units will now be named after, “has been passionate about creating social mobility by providing education opportunities for gifted children from underprivileged backgrounds for many years,” the trust said.

TDET chief executive Julie Taylor said: “We are looking forward to welcoming the PRU into our trust. We are excited to work together to create an academy that offers enriching experiences for young people struggling to succeed with their education, using highly creative ways of teaching that will encourage pupils to develop the confidence, skill and knowledge to believe they can lead successful lives and make a positive contribution to society.”

Jonathan Lewis, service director for education at Peterborough City Council and Cambridgeshire County Council, said: “The PRU has been on a journey of improvement since the Ofsted inspection in 2019 and I’m looking forward to working with the trust as part of this exciting new partnership.

“We are committed to ensuring that young people are given the best opportunities in their education and this partnership will greatly benefit pupils at the new Richard Barnes Academy.”