Following our earlier article on the closure of the Studio school, published on Thursday night, further news has come in this morning June 8 and the Rye Academy Trust has issued the following statement:
“The Trustees of the Rye Academy Trust are delighted to announce that, in collaboration with the Aquinas Trust, capital funding of £4.1m has been secured from the Government to improve the infrastructure of Rye College.
The capital investment will see a range of refurbishment works including roof repairs, new toilets, upgraded disabled access arrangements, replacement windows, an updated heating system and a range of fire safety works. The project is expected to take 15 to 18 months to complete and is due to commence this summer.
The Rye Academy Trust and the Aquinas Trust have also started working closely together in order to improve the educational provision at Rye College and Rye Community Primary School and are looking forward to continuing this relationship and working more closely together in the future.
Andrew Ferguson, Lead Executive of the Rye Academy Trust said:
‘This is excellent news for our schools. Working together with Aquinas we have secured a major investment in our buildings, which demonstrates the ongoing commitment to education in Rye by both Trusts and the Government. This will provide our students and staff with a greatly improved learning environment’.”
This is good news that many parents of current and prospective pupils must have been waiting anxiously for. It suggests that financial arrangements have been entered into with the Aquinas Trust for the continued running of the school and these have given the DfE confidence in its future. Clearly the association with the Aquinas Trust is becoming even closer, although there has been no announcement of a formal merger yet. It seems likely, though, that it can only be a question of time before this happens. We look forward to further information being forthcoming from the Rye Academy Trust in due course. – Editor
Image Credits: Kenneth Bird .
I wonder whether this desperately needed money was made available for the chance for other Multi-Academy Trusts to ‘merge’ with Rye Academy Trust or was it a ‘dowry’ of public money gifted by an unelected and therefore unaccountable regional DfE official solely to the very remote Aquinas Trust (which is a private company) with seemingly no competitive bids?
This doesn’t strike me as the way that public finances and resources should be run.
I am very glad Rye Academy has found a solution as we all want it to do well but apart from Andy Stuart’s concern I have to add mine. I am worried about the influence of a belief system, God, which is for some but not others. I went on the website which supports my concern though some of the expressed ideology sounds good but some of following worries me:”This education mission entails the ongoing development of the entire potential of every person. It seeks to promote the well being and freedom of every person (great )which shapes the daily life of a catholic school as a community in which faith is expressed and shared through every aspect if its activity”…….”They open pupils minds to the transcendent dimension of life and reality of GOD revealed in Jesus Christ.”
We will have to see. Heidi Foster
@Heidi Foster
Aquinas Trust has a Church of England foundation not Catholic. I think you’re googling the wrong people.