According to the Order published on legislation.gov.uk, the Department for Education has recast the endowment linked to Hathern Church of England Primary School Teacher’s House. The instrument was made on 15 October 2026 and came into force on 16 October 2026, after the Secretary of State was satisfied that the original endowment had been held in connection with Church of England religious education at a voluntary school whose premises are no longer used for that purpose. The legal basis matters. The Order is made under sections 554 and 556 of the Education Act 1996, which allow new provision to be made for educational endowments when the original school use has fallen away. In practical terms, this is a statutory reallocation of an existing charitable education asset rather than a new funding award.
The foundation traces back to a deed dated 3 July 1849 between Charles March Phillipps and the minister and churchwardens of the Parish of Hathern. The asset base now consists of £70,300, described in the Order as the net proceeds of sale of the former teacher’s house, together with any income earned on those monies. That historic link is significant because the proceeds are not treated as unrestricted diocesan money. The Order preserves the denominational and educational character of the endowment, while updating its governance and permitted uses to reflect the fact that the original property has been sold.
The Leicester Diocesan Board of Education applied for the Order, and the Secretary of State accepted that it was the appropriate Church of England authority for the purpose. The legislation.gov.uk text also records that notice of the proposed Order was given in the form required by section 555 of the Education Act 1996. No representations were made during that process. For governance purposes, that means the statutory consultation stage closed without a formal challenge to the proposed division of assets or to the proposed trustee arrangements.
The main operative change is the division of the trust assets into two separate funds. Eleven fourteenths must be placed in the Hathern Church of England Primary School Teacher’s House Fund, described as the School Fund, and three fourteenths must be placed in the Hathern Church of England Primary School Teacher’s House Religious Education Fund. Using the £70,300 capital figure stated in the Order, and before any administration costs or income adjustments, that split points to roughly £55,236 for the School Fund and £15,064 for the Religious Education Fund. The Order also makes clear that the apportionment must be made after payment of administration expenses, so the final working figures may vary slightly.
Control of the money is also redrawn. The Leicester Diocesan Board of Education becomes trustee of the foundation itself, the trust assets and the School Fund, while the minister and churchwardens of the Parish of Hathern become trustees of the Religious Education Fund. Any funds held for the foundation immediately before the operative date must be transferred to the Diocesan Board. This produces a two-track governance structure. The larger school-facing share is centralised with the diocesan body, while the smaller religious education share remains locally held within the parish. For trustees and school governors, the immediate administrative task is to identify which body now has authority over each part of the former endowment.
For the Religious Education Fund, the permitted use is tightly drawn. After administration expenses, the trustees must use the income, and may use the capital, for educational purposes related to the Parish of Hathern in connection with religious education in accordance with the tenets of the Church of England, whether by means of a Sunday School or otherwise. That gives the parish a continuing local resource for denominational education, but not a general-purpose community fund. Any spending decision will need to be traceable to Church of England religious education in Hathern, which places a clear record-keeping duty on the local trustees.
The School Fund is treated differently. Under article 5 and the Schedule, the Diocesan Board must hold it on the uniform statutory trusts set out in Schedule 36 to the Education Act 1996, and article 6 then requires it to be consolidated into the Leicester Diocesan Uniform Statutory Trusts Fund. The Explanatory Note states that this places the relevant assets alongside the wider diocesan fund for the benefit of Church of England voluntary schools, foundation schools, academy schools, alternative provision academies, city technology colleges and city colleges for the technology of the arts in the Diocese of Leicester. The permitted uses are correspondingly broader. The Schedule allows capital and income to support school sites, buildings, maintenance and teacher’s houses, and allows income to be used for advisory work, inspection-related services and associated staffing costs connected with Church of England provision.
The real effect of the Order is therefore a partial local retention and a larger diocesan pooling exercise. A defined share of the former Hathern asset remains ring-fenced for parish-based religious education, while most of the capital is absorbed into a wider Leicester diocesan trust that can be deployed across a broader group of eligible schools. For Church of England education provision, that is the key point. The Order preserves the original charitable purpose in updated form, but it shifts the balance of benefit away from a single historic teacher’s house and towards flexible diocesan use under modern statutory trusts. On its face this is a narrow local instrument, yet it shows how nineteenth-century education endowments continue to be repurposed through current education law.