The head of an academy trust which is planning to more than treble in size has said he cannot understand why more businesses are not stepping forward to sponsor schools.
Co-op Academies Trust plans to expand to run 40 schools in the next three years and has committed £3.6m to deliver this.
Frank Norris the trust’s director told Tes he did not understand why more businesses were not following the Co-op’s example and getting involved in the academies programme.
And he said he believed that major businesses could also benefit education in other ways.
“Whille I cannot understand why more companies don’t follow the Co-op’s example and sponsor academies it is not the only way business can support education.
“Industry can offer schools and their pupils so much more from providing senior managers as governors to offering structured work experience programmes and site visits,” he added.
Co-op is the largest corporate sponsor of schools in the UK. It currently runs 12 academies, five primaries and seven secondaries in Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire and Stoke-on-Trent.
It says it plans to continue its strategy of taking on schools serving deprived communities in areas where it already has a footprint.
This means its expansion will be focused on Greater Manchester, Leeds, Stoke and surrounding authorities.
Mr Norris said it already had some schools in the pipeline which were looking to join the trust.
His call for more businesses to get involved in schools echoes a call made by George Osborne’s Northern Powerhouse Partnership last week.
The partnership produced a report earlier this that warned of a significant North-South divide in education, with too many northern young people, especially those from disadvantaged homes, falling behind those in other parts of the UK.
It called for firms to pledge to offer youngsters meaningful careers advice and guidance, including work placements, to help boost skills and provide opportunities to youngsters in the North of England.
Mr Osborne told MPs on the Education Select Committee that the Government needed to commit to making raising standards in the North one of its big ideas.
Mr Norris said the Co-op was committed to improving the communities it served.
He said the support the wider Co-op group was important to the academies trust.
Not only has the group provided £3.6m but the group’s values underpin the work of the trust in Mr Norris said.
He told Tes that the vision for expansion was for groups of eight to ten schools working with a Co-op director responsible for improving school performance in those areas. However he said heads are given autonomy to do their jobs.
“If at one end of the spectrum of multi academy trusts there are those where the schools are run centrally and at other end there are federations of academies I think that we are somewhere in the middle.”
