Six primary schools across Weston-super-Mare and its surrounding villages have officially formed a multi-academy trust.

Ashcombe and Christ Church primary schools, which are based in Weston, will join with Becket, St Martin’s and Worle Village primary schools in Worle and Hutton Primary School.

The new trust will be called Kaleidoscope and the newly-appointed chief executive Simon Marriott, who is the headteacher at St Martin’s School, has said the move will improve pupils’ education, confidence and social skills.

He added: “We will now have access to higher quality training so we can be the best at teaching and learning.

“We can work together and use our skills across the schools and save money in the long run.”

Schools in North Somerset need to become academies by September next year as the Department for Education announced local authorities will no longer be given money from the Government.

Instead, funds will be given directly to schools through their academy trusts.

Mr Marriott said Kaleidoscope’s first aim will be to create an ‘established’ trust within the community.

He added: “We want to become well-known and share our values with local people.

“The benefit of being part of a larger organisation is children will have more access to resources, they can attend cross-school events, work with other groups of children and it will be good for their confidence, social skills as well as academic outcomes.”

There are more than 1,500 children across the six schools who will be affected by the change.

The Weston and Worle schools originally worked separately as two groups but the headteachers of the six schools soon saw the benefits of teaming up on a larger scale.

Mr Marriott said: “We found we had a lot in common with the other schools and looked at how we could offer more to our children.

“We think we will be able to offer exciting opportunities for our children, families and staff.

“Kaleidoscope will focus on the whole child, creative, innovative, community focused and collaborative.

“We will strive for and share best practice in education.