state.

Because Barclay got a poor Ofsted report two and a half years ago, the government will forcibly turn it into an academy. Which trust it is handed to is determined solely by a Whitehall civil servant. Neither the local authority, nor the school governors, nor the staff – and least of all the parents and pupils – get any say in the process. This is the lawful regime, as set by former education secretary turned defender of democracy Michael Gove.

The school was first paired up with a local trust, Herts for Learning, until the government suddenly changed its mind for reasons never properly explained to anyone at Barclay. The Department for Education told me on Monday that the trust – formerly part of Hertfordshire county council’s school improvementservice – was “concerned” about its “capacity to absorb the school”. The trust’s head, Alex Thomas, vehemently denies this and says he would take the school tomorrow if he could.

Instead, the school was awarded last March to Future Academies trust (Fat), based in central London. In minutes of a meeting released under freedom of information, civil servants admitted to the school that there was no formal process in making the decision. There was “no list” of who had been approached and “no documented evidence”. In this hasty ad hoc fashion the future of nearly 900 pupils was decided – and a 70-year-old public asset, with plenty of land and its own Henry Moore sculpture, was given away.

Once a school becomes an academy, it is effectively privatised. Taxpayer money