Emmanuel Schools Foundation

The Emmanuel Schools Foundation (ESF) is a charitable trust which has been involved in education since 1989.

ESF currently run six schools. The four original members of the ESF are: Emmanuel City Technology College in Gateshead (opened 1990), The King's Academy in Middlesbrough (2003), Trinity Academy in Thorne, Doncaster (2005) and Bede Academy in Blyth, Northumberland which opened in September 2009. In 2004, the Foundation's former chairman, Sir Peter Vardy, discussed an aim to sponsor seven schools in the North of England that would educate a total of 10,000 students. In April 2019, the ESF also formally adopted Joseph Swan Academy in Gateshead into the foundation. Most recently, the foundation adopted Christ's College Sunderland (formerly 'Grindon Hall Christian School') in Sunderland into ESF.

Many of its schools have been oversubscribed every year.

Although the Government allows academies to select 10% of pupils by ability, ESF Academies do not do so, being fully comprehensive schools for local children. They have a Christian ethos, but are not faith schools and welcome staff and students of all faiths and of none.