How Saudi cash helps Bucks pupils

Bucks Learning Trust, which was set up by Bucks County Council in 2013, aims to ‘provide wide-ranging support to enable all children in the county to have the best education possible’.

But as well as its work close to home, it also provides teacher training to countries in the Middle East, bringing in ‘thousands of pounds’ to spend in Bucks.

The service is provided to registered British schools, and is exactly the same as the training received by teachers in the UK.

While other authorities have had to scrap their school improvement programmes because of cuts, the trust says the cash is an important way of keeping its service going.

Paul Guenault, director of education services at the BLT said: “BLT has carried on a trading arrangement with British Schools Overseas originally started by the County Council over ten years ago.

“Each year, the arrangement generates thousands of pounds of additional income.

“This is invested back into support services across Buckinghamshire to help give young people the best education possible. In this day and age, we have to take advantage of commercial opportunities to help generate valuable extra income.

Zahir Mohammed, cabinet member for education and skills at the county council, said, “This demonstrates that the quality of services that BLT provides in Buckinghamshire is not only locally and nationally recognised, but internationally too.

“In turn this helps to support school improvement work in many of our schools needing support. I am also really pleased to hear the quality of BLT’s support being commended in recent Ofsted reports on Buckinghamshire schools.”