Oasis Community Learning Trust which runs the Oasis Academy is pulling out of the Isle of Sheppey.

The trust broke the news to shocked staff this afternoon. It is not known yet who will take over.

Oasis currently runs two sites on the Island in Marine Parade, Sheerness and Minster Road, Minster with around 1,500 pupils.

The decision to throw in the towel follows a damning Ofsted report last August which branded the school as 'inadequate'. At the time, Oasis founder Steve Chalke vowed to pump an additional £1.6m more into the academy

A spokesman for the Trust said: "Oasis Community Learning’s Board of Trustees, in mutual agreement with the Department for Education, has agreed to transfer Oasis Academy Isle of Sheppey to another trust.

"We will work with the department while they appoint a new trust and will ensure this process is managed as smoothly as possible for the benefit of the students we serve."

He added: “The decision to hand over the academy is one we have taken with a heavy heart.

"Despite the hard work of our staff and the significant investment and new processes that have been introduced at the school, we are sorry that we have not been able to successfully deliver the exceptional education environment that our young people deserve.

“Our priorities remain the young people and the wider academy community we are proud to serve and we are committed to supporting the students to achieve their best and to make great progress.

"The academy’s staff and the wider Oasis team continue to work hard to deliver our improvement plans.

“There are considerable challenges to providing exceptional secondary education on the island, not least the levels of disadvantage that some experience. The Oasis Charitable Trust plans to continue its collaboration with local partners to provide youth and community work beyond the transfer.

“While we are extremely disappointed by this outcome, Oasis remains deeply committed to the Isle of Sheppey and to the entire school community. We will work closely with the DfE and the new sponsor to make this process as positive and successful as possible.”

Sittingbourne and Sheppey MP Gordon Henderson said he was not surprised by the decision.

He said: "I was informed earlier today by the Department for Education that the South East regional director Dame Kate Dethridge has reached a mutual agreement with the Oasis Community Learning Board of Trustees for Oasis Academy Isle of Sheppey to transfer to another trust.

"I am not surprised about this decision but I am sorry that Oasis Community Learning has been penalised for the historic problem of secondary education on Sheppey."

He said: "That problem is rooted in the decision taken in the 1970s to scrap the Island's technical schools and turn Sheppey into a comprehensive system at the same time leaving Sittingbourne in Kent's selective education system.

"Oasis Community Learning has done its best to improve the situation but sadly it failed.

"Increasingly, we have seen more and more Island parents send their children to Sittingbourne schools which has resulted in the current situation where almost 1,000 children are bussed to the mainland every day.

"What Sheppey needs is a secondary education system similar to that in Sittingbourne, which has five very good schools. The Island has only one secondary school spread across two sites. That has to change.

"I have long advocated Sheppey having two different secondary schools, each run by a different trust. One of those schools should specialise in academic subjects and the other vocational subjects.

"I will now work with Kent County Council and Swale Council to lobby the Department for Education to ensure the two sites we have on Sheppey are run by different trusts to provide the best possible standard of education."

Sheerness town councillor Dolley White, who also serves on the Oasis Community Hub, said: "Sheppey children current and future deserve to be everyone's priority. As a community, we should seek better partnerships between our school and it's stakeholders like parents and staff.

"Oasis achieved some good things, especially through its support of families during the Covid-19 pandemic and the launch of the Sheppey Support Bus. We need to build on that while looking at educational accountability as well."

It is the first time Oasis Community Learning, which runs 52 schools in the UK, has agreed to give up control of any.

The academy sites, originally created by the merger of Cheyne Middle School and Minster College, have never been rated ‘good’ or better since they opened on September 1, 2009, with 2,136 pupils.

Oasis, the sixth largest trust in England, took over in January 2014, eight years ago, at the request of the government when the original sponsors Dulwich College, the Diocese of Canterbury and Kent County Council failed.

The school was relaunched as the Oasis Academy Isle of Sheppey.

It has been rated ‘requires improvement’ three times since then and finally slid into special measures last year.

Inspector Lee Selby wrote: "Too many pupils feel unsafe at this school. Some pupils told us they ‘have had enough’ of being jostled and hurt in corridors or verbally abused.

"Leaders and staff do too little to challenge the foul, homophobic, racist and sexist language which is commonplace across both sites."

His team found more than half of pupils were not attending regularly, while behaviour was “often dangerous”.

The watchdog also warned that the school had seen “too many false fresh starts”.

Its latest principal Andy Booth took over from Tina Lee in September 2021. He said at the time: "Students must need to want to come to school and that's my job. We have thrown everything, including the kitchen sink, at this. It is essential we have quality teachers and support staff and that we can retain them.”

A Department for Education spokesman said: “The Oasis Academy Isle of Sheppey is to be transferred to another trust to ensure that the appropriate steps are taken to provide the best possible standard of education to its pupils.

“We are working closely with Oasis Community Learning, who mutually agreed on the transfer, to ensure a smooth process that limits disruption to pupils and staff.”

When an academy is judged 'inadequate' the department's regional director has powers to intervene in the school and transfer it into a high quality multi-academy trust.

The department issued a Termination Warning Notice which led to Oasis agreeing to transfer the school.

Steve Chalke, founder of Oasis, said after the latest Ofsted report: “This clearly shows there are very serious problems at the academy and makes equally clear the scale of the challenge we face. It is the job of Oasis to turn this school around and we will do so, urgently."

He stressed Oasis had no intention of giving up and remained "fully committed."

He said: “We are investing a further £1.3m in the school buildings and £300,000 on a team of extra youth workers and pastoral roles as we know we also have to work with the parents."

Sheppey's educational woes began more than 50 years ago when KCC demolished the Island's two technical and two secondary modern schools and replaced them with one large coeducational comprehensive - The Sheppey School or 'Comp' - in 1970 while leaving Sittingbourne as a selective area with two grammar schools.

It also introduced middle schools, later abandoned, to the Island which took pupils from nine to 13 while the rest of Kent remained a two-tier system.

Swale councillor Peter MacDonald said: "People took their eye off the ball.

"Sheppey had four good secondary schools including a world-leading technical school. There was a cross-flow with pupils from Sittingbourne coming to the Tech. We need a new technical school."

Swale Academies Trust, which runs 10 primary schools and nine secondary schools including Westlands and The Sittingbourne School in Sittingbourne and The Whitstable School, is one of the trusts already being tipped to possibly take over the Sheppey chalice.

Retired head master and former education consultant Peter Read said the news followed a "dreadful 10 years of failure" by Oasis.

He said there had been a "total loss of confidence" in the school culminating in "the worst Ofsted Report I think I have ever seen". He added: "The high-profile Steve Chalke, founder of Oasis, said after the latest Ofsted report: ‘This clearly shows there are very serious problems at the academy’. Where on earth has he been living for the previous 10 years not to have noticed?"

Mr Chalke has declined to comment.

Mr Read, who said he was once offered the chance to head up the school, described the past decade of education on Sheppey as a "debacle".

In a number of reports over the years he has highlighted the academy's high exclusion rates, the flight of pupils to Sittingbourne, unqualified teachers and the rapid turnover of headteachers "often commuting daily from outside Kent". The academy has had six principals since 2013 many coming from Croydon or Brighton.

Mr Read added: "It is utterly unsurprising that pupil absence is so high; would you want your child to attend a school such as that, even if it were the only possibility offered? It hardly surprising that home education is such a popular option on Sheppey as frustrated parents take teaching into their own hands."