Senior staff from a successful foundation trust are still visiting a failing Derby free school to offer help and advice.
The Government asked the Greenwood Dale Foundation Trust to step in to assist Al-Madinah School, which was placed in special measures by education inspectors from Ofsted – Office for Standards in Education – in October last year.
Although Greenwood trust chief executive Barry Day has already indicated he would not want to take the city school on full-time because of Al-Madinah’s financial problems, he did send a number of senior staff to work there.
He also wrote a plan for the Muslim school, which has two sites in the city – at Friar Gate and Nelson Street.
A Greenwood Dale spokesman said: “This term some of our staff are again working with the senior school team, under interim head Safeena Higgins, and we are monitoring how things are going.”
Al-Madinah’s remaining trustees – Shazia Parveen and Shabhan Rehmat – who set up the school in 2012 – have previously indicated their intention to resign at the end of January, meaning a new trust management will have to be appointed from February.
In the meantime, the two trustees have posted their own plan on the school’s website, although it is understood this was previously rejected by Schools Minister Lord Nash.
Lord Nash asked Mr Day to step in and said they want to get the special measures label lifted by April.
Last October’s inspection led to a damning report which said Al-Madinah School was “inadequate”, “dysfunctional” and “in chaos”.
This was followed by a monitoring visit in early December, which indicated no progress had been made and that the school had gone backwards.
A further monitoring visit is expected during this term.
Mr Day previously said it was “vitally important for progress to be shown quickly.”
Mr Day has also been drawing up plans for the school’s primary department in Norman House, Friar Gate, to relocate to Midland House, in Nelson Street.
This would involve building a new playground and smaller toilets being installed.
Mr Day, who took a group of parents to see his trust’s flagship academy in Nottingham before Christmas, said: “It is important that the community takes charge of what is happening and that the leadership and governance is influenced by them.”