The transfer of schools run by Bristol’s controversial Society of Merchant Venturers to a national academy chain has now been completed – and it has been confirmed that its education arm the Venturers Trust will have ‘no involvement with any of the schools’ going forward.
But the Venturers Trust may still be providing funding for some activities in the schools it once ran, as it has a historic endowment fund for education.
The transfer of the eight state schools in Bristol run by the Venturers Trust to national multi-academy trust E-ACT was formally completed on September 1, but the transfer involved the formal closure of three of the schools, which reopened the next day with new names and new registrations with the Government’s education inspectors Ofsted.
The Venturers Trust’s two biggest schools – Merchants Academy in Withywood and Montpelier High (formerly Colston’s Girls’ School) – were both rated as ‘inadequate’, the lowest Ofsted rating, at the point they closed on August 31 last year.
Both those schools, and Barton Hill Academy, were reopened on September 1 under new names, with the E-ACT name prominent.
The Venturers Trust’s five other schools did not close and reopen as technically new schools. They were: Kingfisher primary school in St Anne’s Park; the all-ages special needs school Venturers Academy in Withywood; Fairlawn primary school in Montpelier; Bannerman Road primary school in Easton and the Dolphin School – a primary school next to Montpelier High School.
A spokesperson for E-ACT said the closure and reopening of the three schools under a different registration was ‘standard Ofsted and Department for Education practice’ based on the school’s previous Ofsted status.
Merchants Academy and Montpelier High both have current ‘inadequate’ ratings, while Barton Hill Academy was inspected in April 2024 and given a ‘requires improvement’ rating – the same rating currently held by the Dolphin School and Venturers Academy, which did not close and reopen the next day.
Of the eight schools run by the Venturers Trust, only three had Ofsted ratings of ‘Good’ at the point where the Venturers transferred them to E-Act – Fairlawn, Kingfisher and Bannerman Road.
The transfer was supposed to take place in 2023 or early 2024 but was held up by a wrangle over the ownership of one of the buildings at Montpelier High School. A spokesperson for E-ACT has confirmed this building has not been transferred to E-ACT along with the rest of the school, but would not go into further details.
The eight schools now join the other six schools in E-ACT multi-academy trust in Bristol. It takes the total run by the trust across the country to 38, and ends the Society of Merchant Venturers’ involvement in state education.
“Whilst Venturers Trust have no involvement with any of the schools which were transferred to E-ACT in September, their Endowment Fund remains in place to provide funding for activities for pupils, by providing grants or other financial assistance to undertake extra-curricular activities,” a spokesperson for E-ACT said.
“E-ACT has a long history of improving schools and is working towards this goal with the schools taken on in Bristol,” he added.
Tom Campbell, the chief executive of E-ACT said the trust was ‘thrilled’ at the expansion, which also included a secondary school in Buckinghamshire at the start of this academic year, describing it as ‘significant growth’ which marked a ‘new chapter in our journey’.
“We are delighted to welcome our new academies from Bristol and Ousedale School into the E-ACT family,” he said. “This expansion not only strengthens our trust but also enhances our ability to provide exceptional educational experiences for all our pupils. Together, we will continue to open minds and open doors, ensuring every child has the opportunity to succeed,” he added.
Bristol Live first revealed that all the state-funded schools run by the Venturers Trust would be taken on by E-ACT, a multi-academy trust that already runs half a dozen schools in Bristol, back in September 2023.
That followed a turbulent time for the Venturers Trust following a number of poor Ofsted inspections at its schools, culminating in a drop for Montpelier High School from an ‘outstanding’ rating to the worst of ‘inadequate’ in June 2022. The following month, the DfE issued the Venturers Trust with a ‘termination warning notice’ that effectively threatened to pull state funding from the school.
That appears to have sparked questions about the future of the Society of Merchant Venturers’ involvement in state-funded education altogether, and in September 2023, the ‘merger’ of the trust with E-ACT was announced.
The involvement of the Society of Merchant Venturers in state education in Bristol was controversial from the start, back in the late 2000s. The organisation, which dates back to the 1500s and is made up now of some of the city’s richest and most prominent business leaders, took over the council-run Withywood Comprehensive, rebuilt and renamed it as Merchants Academy, and around the same time, switched the fee-paying Colston’s Girls’ School to a state-funded academy.
The Merchant Venturers then formed the Venturers Trust in 2017 as a partnership with the University of Bristol, and expanded to take on a total of eight state-funded schools. The involvement of the Venturers Trust in education in Bristol was thrown into focus with the growing calls in the late 2010s for Colston’s Girls’ School to change its name, and escalated with the toppling of the statue of slave trader Edward Colston in June 2020.
Soon after that, the former principal of what was then Colston’s Girls’ School said the Society of Merchant Venturers ‘were not fit to run education’ in Bristol, and a number of the city’s MPs called for the entire organisation to disband.
The effectiveness of the Venturers Trust was brought into further question when Montpelier High School was inspected by Ofsted in March 2022. It was the first time the school, which had eventually changed its name from Colston’s Girls’ School, had been inspected since an ‘Outstanding’ report 12 years earlier. The Ofsted inspectors found the school, which was consistently ranked as the best in Bristol for more than a decade, was inadequate, with concerns over safeguarding and bullying.
The school has since failed to satisfy Ofsted inspectors it should be re-evaluated. In September 2023, after the most recent check-up visit, Ofsted inspectors said: “Leaders have made progress to improve the school, but more work is necessary for the school to be no longer judged as having serious weaknesses.”
At around that time, the Venturers Trust announced it was ‘merging’ with E-ACT to share the running of its eight state schools. But before that ‘merger’ could happen, the Venturers Trust’s other large flagship school, Merchants Academy, was given a damning Ofsted inspection report in March last year.
That report ranked it ‘inadequate’ in every single area, and local politicians said the Merchant Venturers and the University of Bristol had ‘failed a generation’ of young people in South Bristol.