We are writing to share some exciting news. After careful consideration, our school has decided to seek to convert from a maintained council school and form a multi-academy trust (MAT), as a founder school, with Everton Free School and Football College, and other schools in the northwest of England.
The name of our new MAT will be The People’s Learning Trust, and it will be linked to Everton Football Club (EFC). It will be the first and only multi-academy trust linked to a Premier League club in the country.
You may well have seen on the news in recent years, that there is an increasing expectation from the UK Government that all schools convert to become Academies. This means moving away from being under the control of a Local Authority and working together with other groups of schools instead.
The People’s Learning Trust are initially a small collection of like-minded schools, with a commitment to inclusive, innovative and research-led education for all young people. Within the new trust, there is a commitment to individual schools continuing to be able to run in the best interests of their children and communities. This means that when we convert you will not see huge changes in what we do or how we operate. What we will begin to see are greater opportunities to work together with other schools, to save money on the things that we must buy individually and to improve our school through sharing of ideas with other like-minded settings. Our new trust will enable us to further develop our sporting offer and focus on neuroscience research with our closer links to Goldsmiths, University of London.
In February, the Department for Education’s Regional Director will be looking at our application to convert, so we now enter a period of information-giving and question-answering. We are now informing all stakeholders and will work to change our school status. Our aim is to convert on 1st September, but this may change.
We have created a webpage that seeks to answer many of the questions you have.
Please head over to: https://www.overchurchinfantschool.co.uk/academy-conversion-consultation/ to find out more information and to see our Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs).
If you have further questions then please send them into us on consultation@overchurchinfant.
wirral.sch.uk and we will use any further questions and information to update the FAQs page.
The consultation will close on Friday 6th February 2026.
