Demonstration to be held calling for 8 Hastings and St Leonards schools to be brought back under county council control

The teachers’ union, the National Education Union (NEU), has organised the event, which will take place on March 22 at Wellington Place from 11am.

The move comes after Hastings and Rye MP, Helena Dollimore, said in January that The University of Brighton Academies Trust (UBAT) will no longer be running the eight schools in Hastings and St Leonards.

The schools in UBAT include West St Leonards Primary Academy, Dudley Infant Academy, The Baird Primary Academy, Churchwood Primary Academy, Robsack Wood Primary Academy and Silverdale Primary Academy, as well as Hastings Academy and St Leonards Academy.

In January Ms Dollimore said she had been raising ‘problems’ with the trust ‘at the highest levels’ since she was elected last July.

She added: “Everyone in our community was horrified to hear that the trust was taking a whopping 20 per cent of the Government grant meant for our local schools.”

Last April, the then Hastings MP, Sally-Ann Hart called for the academies trust to return ‘millions’ of pounds which she said have been ‘diverted away from our students into coffers in Brighton’.

Her comments came after she made a Freedom of Information request.

Ms Dollimore declared UBAT’s decision to no longer run the eight schools a ‘victory for the young people of Hastings and Rye, and a vindication of what pupils, parents and teachers have been campaigning for’.

A spokesperson for UBAT said in January that its Board of Trustees informed the Department for Education of their desire to seek to transfer the academies in the trust to other academy trusts.

Last July teachers held a rally in Hastings town centre as part of a series of strikes.

The NEU organised the event, which it said concerned a dispute over workload and job cuts at a number of schools in town run by UBAT.