Inside Brigantia, Sheffield’s most troubled academy trust

Dear readers – after King Ted’s failed its Ofsted inspection in 2022, the government moved swiftly to turn it into an academy. Parents and governors tried to fight the proposal, arguing that Brigantia – the small multi-academy trust that runs four schools in northeast Sheffield – was an unsuitable choice for such a historic and high-achieving institution. 

“Toxic management – those words came up a lot,” recalled one parent who campaigned against Brigantia taking over King Ted’s, describing the stories she heard about life inside Brigantia’s schools.

Snippets of what’s going on inside Brigantia have made their way into the press over the past few years, but today we’ve come closer to being able to tell the full story. How did a multi-academy trust that promised to turn around Sheffield’s most troubled schools become accused of a bullying workplace culture? That’s today’s story. But first, your Tribune briefing – including the latest on Andrew Milne.

Your Tribune briefing 🗞️

🏠If you’ve been following our investigation into Andrew Milne, you might be interested by this long read published yesterday. Its author, Daniel Cloake, has been writing about Milne for a few years in his capacity as a courtroom reporter. With some pretty jaw-dropping details including Milne’s attempts to sue auction houses after claiming he’d been sold ungenuine art, a look behind the scenes at what’s going on at the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA), and some disturbing allegations about Cloake’s personal interactions with Milne, there’s a lot there. It’s pretty hefty, so you might need to set aside half an hour…

🚨 A second boy has been arrested after a 16 year old was shot on London Road on Monday evening. The second boy, also 16, was arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to commit murder on Tuesday evening. A 15 year old was arrested earlier the same day. Both remain in custody. The victim was found injured at the junction of London Road and Ward Place at around 5.15pm. He was taken to Northern General Hospital, where he remains in a critical condition.

✈️ Doncaster Sheffield Airport has passed its last legislative hurdle after Doncaster council approved £57 million in borrowing to support its reopening. The Doncaster Free Press report that a round of applause broke out following the vote, which saw all 12 Labour councillors and the vast majority of the council’s 36 Reform councillors vote to allow the borrowing. The council says the borrowing is needed to “help rectify cashflow issues” in the early years of the project.

💧 Yorkshire’s hosepipe ban is set to end “within weeks” after Yorkshire Water issued positive news about reservoir levels. They say heavy rain brought by Storm Claudia has seen water levels in the region’s reservoirs rise to 84.6%, compared to 80.5% the previous week. This also means they have been able to reduce the number of drought permits they are using, which allow companies to increase the amount of water they take from rivers to use for supply.

🎸 BBC Radio 6 Music’s New Music Fix have been in Sheffield all week to “shine a spotlight on South Yorkshire's exciting music scene”. On Monday evening they interviewed Self Esteem after a triumphant gig at the Arena, while on Tuesday and Thursday they featured Richard Hawley live in session from Sidney and Matilda. On Wednesday, they spoke to the people behind DIY venue, label and studio Delicious Clam. You can listen to all the programmes again at the BBC 6 Music website.

By Mollie Simpson

Friday evening. I’m in the office on a late evening call to a source. On the other end of the phone, a former senior teacher is rifling through files in her Sheffield home. She eventually finds the right document and sets it in her lap. “Right,” she says. 

“The employee will not publish or issue a cause to be made that has derogatory or disparaging comments about the employer or any employee or officer,” she says, reading from a non-disclosure agreement that she signed when she was dismissed from her role by the multi-academy trust Brigantia. In other words: don’t talk to the press.

Yet in the past four weeks, seven former employees have come forward to speak to The Tribune about Brigantia. Three of them signed NDAs. All of them know each other and decided as a group they’d like to go to the press about the issues with their former employer. Some were already known to each other through working together in the past, others met properly for the first time this summer over a dinner. 

Another ex staff member arrives at his interview with two sprawling documents entitled “The rise of MATs [multi academy trusts] and the end of inclusion” and “Missing people” (peppered with quirky references to the Russian Revolution and the Godfather mafia boss Don Corleone). It’s clear he harbours enormous resentment against his ex employer.

Those who didn’t know each other before this year have found common ground in their experiences of workplace bullying. In my interviews with them, they describe an academy trust that tried to put its own spin on managing schools in some of Sheffield's most deprived neighbourhoods, exhibiting an inflexible attitude towards those who didn’t bend to their will, and, in extreme cases, forcing out staff who voiced criticisms. Another source also showed me a letter that some parents interpreted as a threat to exclude their children by moving them to another school if those parents were found to be unfairly criticising the trust.

In addition to the former senior teacher, the group of seven included two other former senior teachers and others who worked in various teaching and administrative roles across the trust. Despite my repeated attempts to encourage these people to go public with their accusations, none would do so. We wrestled whether it’s fair to tell the story of an institution via the accounts of those who have chosen to hide behind the veil of anonymity. But given the severity of some of the accusations of bullying and the coherence of the accounts of different people, we decided to go ahead with this story

We put all of the key claims in this story to Brigantia earlier this week. A spokesperson responded that while the trust “does not comment on individual employment matters or personal allegations”, they said that “as a Trust, we uphold strong values and expectations”.

Furthermore, the spokesperson said:

“All Brigantia Learning Trust academies have demonstrated an improving trajectory” during Ofsted inspections over the last four years, and said: “We are proud that our academies Hinde House (2-16), Concord Junior, Wincobank Nursery and Infant and Longley Park Sixth Form academies have been judged to be ‘Good’ during this time. Our focus remains on ensuring positive environments for both staff and students so that every member of our community can thrive.”

Brigantia, a small multi-academy learning trust that runs four schools in north east Sheffield, has much to be proud of. In 2024, Ofsted inspectors said Yewlands Academy had undergone a period of “significant improvement” since being taken over by Brigantia in 2018; Hinde House and Longley Park sixth form have remained consistently “Good” schools since Brigantia’s intervention. If you were to rank Sheffield schools by GCSE results, Brigantia’s schools would sit somewhere in the middle. Many of these schools are situated in areas with above-average levels of deprivation – according to data from the 2024/25 academic year, 49% of pupils at Hinde House are eligible for free school meals, and 41% at Yewlands, well above the citywide average of 34%.

But it has also become associated with a track record of leadership instability. A scroll through Companies House shows Brigantia has burned through 31 directors since 2013. At a beer tasting event for Tribune members in early November, I got talking to a teacher at King Edwards who told me that in Sheffield’s tight-knit teaching circles the trust has become synonymous with a “bullying culture”.