A RECENT partnership of local schools has received a Government stamp of approval from the regional schools commissioner for the south west.

The Link Academy was established in April 2016 when the schools of Newton and Teign Federation joined together with the schools of the Totnes Federation of Village Schools. This joined up Bearnes Voluntary Primary and Hennock Community Primary School with Diptford C of E Primary School; Harbertonford C of E Primary School; Landscove C of E Primary School and Stoke Gabriel Community Primary School.

Rebecca Clark, regional schools commissioner for the south west, wrote a letter to Stoke Gabriel Community Primary School congratulating them on their ‘excellent’ key stage two results, which ‘positioned them as one of our regions highest performing academies in 2016’.

Nicky Dunford, chief executive for the Link Academy Trust, together with executive principal Tony Callcut and directors Isabel Cherrett and Roy Gilllard said they were delighted with the endorsement of the newly-established Link Academy.

Nicky said: ‘Our Trust’s vision and core purpose is to support existing small stand-alone academies and schools wishing to become academies, through the centralising of a range of services to collaboratively drive school improvement forward, in order to attain high standards.

‘This is achieved by reducing business costs through such things as sharing staffing expertise and resources to maximise effectiveness; joint procurement of services to achieve economies of scale; applying for additional funding to improve and enhance schools environments through capital projects; and other exciting new initiatives such as the inclusion hub based at Bearnes.

‘We’re very proud of the achievements of all our academies, in a range of new and creative learning experiences all of which contribute to amazing learning progress as evident in the Stoke Gabriel results.’