Parents, teachers and students alike have signed a petition to irrefutably oppose the pending re-brokerage of Khalsa Secondary Academy (KSA) in Stoke Poges, Buckingham. The petition, created by the Save our Sikh School group, has now reached over six thousand signatures from dismayed and concerned parents to try and save KSA from being re-brokered to an alternative Academies Trust.
Despite the academic strength of KSA, consistently in the top 10% of schools nationally for the results achieved and high student satisfaction, the Department of Education (DfE) is still determined to rebroker the school – regardless of the significant progress made since the Ofsted inspection as evidenced by external audits in Safeguarding, Governance and SEND.
Parents are increasingly worried that despite the strength of education and depth of religious support their children receive at KSA, all of this will be lost in moving to a different Trust. Parents are particularly concerned that the proposed sponsor aligns a separate jatha, or collective group of Sikhs, to that currently followed at the current sponsor (Khalsa Academies Trust) and they have no previous experience of running a secondary academy, making it a grossly inappropriate choice.
Above all else, the Save our Sikh School group and the wider school community are furious about the disruption to the education of the students at the academy, which has already been impacted due to Covid-19 but is now also being hampered by uncertainty around its future.
One parent of the Save Our Sikh Schools group, Inderjit Bahmra, said: “Most of the pupils at the school have decided to go to Khalsa Secondary Academy as it is a Sikh school following the Sikh ethos. If the school is moved to a different trust, I am sure quite a few students will probably leave. I am quite disappointed with Ofsted considering that the school has made tremendous improvements with safeguarding since the last inspection in December 2019.”
Anita Singh, who founded the 'Save our Sikh school' group, said: “As the official body of the parents of Khalsa Secondary Academy, we are collectively supporting the Khalsa Academies Trust in their legal challenge against the Department of Education and its continued unfair treatment of our school. The Save our Sikh School group will continue to fight for justice against the perceived inequalities and injustice caused by the Department of Education and Regional School Commissioners through their ignorant and unexplainable actions to enforce a Termination Notice and subsequent re-brokerage upon Khalsa Secondary Academy, to move the school to an entirely inappropriate sponsor. We welcome the decision of The High Court to investigate the decision-making process around Khalsa Secondary Academy’s Termination Notice and even if this isn’t prevented, the need to appoint a more appropriate sponsor needs to be recognised.”
