Sheffield is uniting local schools and academies under a new company designed to share expertise during a period of ‘increasing pressure’ on budgets.
The new body – named ‘Learn Sheffield’ - will deliver local authority services surrounding school intervention and improvement while offering teaching expertise to institutions including academies, colleges and council maintained schools.
Directly owned by the schools involved, Sheffield City Council and local educational settings, the company will aim to strengthen ‘city-wide’ partnership work while ‘placing accountability and ownership with schools themselves’.
It will also work to support financial sustainability in local schools during what the town hall has described as ‘a time of increasing pressure on education budgets’.
Cllr Jackie Drayton, Sheffield City Council’s cabinet member for children, young people and families said: ‘It is our key priority that all children and young people have the best education they can and Learn Sheffield will go a long way to ensuring this happens.
‘Schools see themselves as part of Sheffield city’s education system and they want to make a difference. That is why Learn Sheffield will be critical in ensuring continued and sustained improvement in Sheffield children’s attainment.
‘We have been highly innovative and shown our true Sheffield steel by working in partnership with the City Wide Learning Board to keep our schools together and sharing our learning and best practice.’
