As we move into the Labour administration’s second year, it’s clear the previous government’s focus on trust growth is gone. As a result, small trusts are having to think hard about what the future holds. This is not fertile soil for sustained improvement, but the conditions are right for fruitful new ways of working.
Nationally, over 2,000 trusts with fewer than 20 schools oversee a total of 8,624 schools. The impetus for academisation triggered by the 2022 white paper dissipated long before Labour got into office, but many were still keen to grow to develop their support offer for their existing schools and expand their successful models.
Of course, many others are happy as they are, but even they recognise the benefits of collaboration, especially as deteriorating finances mean pooling expertise is a more attractive route to improvement than ever.
The simple (if difficult) truth is that it just doesn’t make sense to continue to aspire to the sort of broad offer the big trusts are able to provide. Arising from that, we need new ways to maximise the value our organisations bring to the wider education system.
At Bellevue Place Education Trust, we’ve started that process.
The core services trusts must deliver are actually few: mainly educational oversight, finance, HR and governance.
Beyond that are tools we are keen (but not obliged) to provide to help our schools be the best they can be. These include IT innovation, curriculum development, contract management and professional development.
These aren’t just things our schools need; they are things all schools need. And if the momentum for growth through acquisition is gone, the potential for growth through diversification has only increased.
Our trust consists of 12 primary schools. They are all performing well, so we have been thinking hard about what we specialise and could offer support in.
We can spin the tables on the academy nay-sayers for good
For example, for the past two years we have had a schools capital allocation (SCA); we get delegated capital funds instead of bidding for them. This means we’ve had to create new structures and gather more, better information about our estate. Having done that work, we are looking at how we can share it and our expertise with other trusts.
But there also areas we still want to improve. These span a wide range, so it’s unlikely we can do them all as well as we want to and we may be better to seek support for them.
For example, Labour’s much-trumpeted school improvement drive is rightly looking beyond educational outcomes; this will require us all to improve our practices in respect of inclusion and meeting need.
Here again, we feel our schools perform well, yet the past year has brought our first two ever permanent exclusions. We may be able to do more to avoid this, but where we definitely need more support is in terms of the impact on staff.
Each exclusion was painful for our headteachers and governors – not just the process itself (for which there is plenty of training available) but the psychological and emotional toll of taking and implementing the decision (for which there is apparently none).
Where such gaps exist, we can surely fill them by working together to share expertise and build resources. Doing so can only make us that much stronger as a sector.
And do so we must, or I am convinced that the hiatus on academy growth will quickly turn into back-sliding altogether. At a recent union leadership conference, I heard one headteacher call for schools to have the option to return to local authority control. They are not alone in wishing for this.
The best argument against this is to continue to prove our value as organisations, beyond academic outcomes and as pillars of inclusion, enrichment and sector-wide improvement.
If we can do that, we can spin the tables on the academy nay-sayers for good. Who knows? We may even persuade this government to give trusts the full confidence that their schools will remain their responsibility for the long term.
So let’s collaborate. Then, we can finally put the academisation question to bed, and start to truly strategise for sustainable improvement.
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