The employment services charity Shaw Trust has launched an education trust that has taken on the running of three schools with the intention of “bridging the gap” between school and work.

Shaw Trust was awarded approved academy status in the summer by the Department for Education.

It then formed the Shaw Education Trust to support special schools and mainstream schools serving disadvantaged communities.

Three Staffordshire schools, the Blackfriars and Coppice Schools in Newcastle-under-Lyme and the Walton Hall Community Special School in Eccles, have joined the trust after converting to become academies.

Jim Kane, who was executive head teacher at Blackfriars Coppice Federation, has been appointed chief executive of the education trust.

Kane said that the schools will have “a focus on bridging the gap between school and the outside world, and will give the young people we serve the best chances to go on to education, employment or training”.

Roy O’Shaughnessy, chief executive of Shaw Trust, said: “By combining our three decades of employability expertise and with some of the UK's leading educationalists, this unique collaboration focuses on making a real difference for those the charity was created to serve.”

O'Shaughnessy is on the board of the Shaw Education Trust.