Consultation on school places in Rothwell cancelled

The current public consultation on a proposal to join Rothwell Haigh Road Infant School with Rothwell Victoria Junior School has been closed early.

Following Ofsted’s ‘Inadequate’ judgement of Rothwell Haigh Road Infant School published in December 2018, Leeds City Council was proposing to join the infant school with Rothwell Victoria Junior School from September 2019 to create a single ‘all-through’ primary school for children aged three to 11, operating across the two existing school sites. The proposal was aimed at raising standards and improving outcomes for all current and future children attending the school. As part of this Leeds City Council made a request to the Department for Education (DfE) to revoke the Academy Order in order to allow the schools to join together. Since the consultation began the DfE has made the decision not to revoke the Academy Order.

As the DfE has determined that Haigh Road Infant School will now become an academy, the public consultation on bringing the two schools together has been cancelled. The legal process to convert the infant school to an academy will now go ahead in the near future.

Leeds City Council deputy director for learning, children and families Phil Mellen said:

“An Academy Order was issued for the infant school by the Department for Education after an OfSTED inspection. We decided to begin a consultation process with parents and carers to get their views on potential amalgamation. However, as the department has made its formal decision that the Academy Order remains in place, we have now ended the consultation to avoid any further confusion.”

If you have any issues or points you wish to raise with the Regional Schools Commissioner relating to the academy conversion of Rothwell Haigh Road Infants School, please contact the Department for Education via their contact form. A link to this can be found on the webpage: https://www.gov.uk/contact-dfe.

The consultation had been planned to run from Monday 11 February until 22 March, with various community drop-in events planned. The consultation and all associated events have now been cancelled, any survey responses submitted will be destroyed, and an update will be provided on our school place planning webpage at: www.leeds.gov.uk/schoolplaceconsultations

ENDS

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