THE City of Ely College will re-open in September with a complete new look, after getting the go ahead to become an Academy.

In future, the school will be known as Ely College, it has a newly designed logo, and the students will be sporting a new uniform when term begins.

The decision to become an academy was made after a period of consultation, and now the governors and principal have received an Academy Order from the Secretary of State for Education, paving the way for a change to academy status before the end of the year.

The school says that the milestone event in its history will mean that as a state-funded independent school, it can “benefit from greater freedoms to innovate and raise standards, free from local authority control and from the limitations of the national curriculum.”

Ely College is becoming an academy in partnership with the CfBT Schools Trust, an Academy Trust sponsored by CfBT, one the UK’s largest and most successful educational charities.

All schools making the change to academy status can join an Academy Trust, a move which provides a range of benefits, including the opportunity to form partnerships with other schools in the Trust, to learn from the experience of the Trustees and the sponsoring organisation, and to benefit from its brand, activities and economies of scale.

Catherine Jenkinson-Dix, Principal of the college, said: “This is a really exciting stage in our development. We are on a fast-track improvement process at the moment, and becoming an academy will enable us to do more of what we know is best for our students and our wider community.

“However, we didn’t want to do this in isolation, and feel that the CfBT Schools Trust are the right partner for us, primarily because of the sponsor organisation’s track record in supporting schools get from ‘good’ to ‘outstanding’, and its history of supporting teachers both in the UK and overseas. My colleagues and I have already had several inspiring meetings with other members of the Trust and with its Trustees, and are excited by the coming months and years.”

Bill Harrison, Chair of Governors at the college, said: “This change of status is an important part of our plan for continuous improvement, and our work with the CfBT Schools Trust will help to provide support and expertise which will speed up the rate of progress. This is, in the view of governors, essential if we are to provide a first class education for our students”.