When I was the regional schools commissioner for the south west, I used to pose a deliberately uncomfortable question.
Would a sane and objective observer in 2030 look at a map of England’s school system and conclude that it had been shaped by wise stewardship?
It wasn’t a rhetorical flourish. It was an attempt to surface something we often avoid naming: that the school system we inhabit today is not the result of a single, coherent design, but of thousands of individual decisions made under pressure, over time, by many of us – trust leaders, boards, civil servants and ministers alike.
This is not about criticism or blame. Some of the most high-profile examples of incoherent growth were not only permitted but encouraged.
Every academy order has ultimately been signed by a regional schools commissioner or regional director acting under delegated authority from the secretary of state. The landscape we now navigate is one we have all had a hand in creating.
And that brings responsibility.
Structures don’t raise standards
As the system matures, the question is no longer simply whether trusts can grow, but whether they should – and under what conditions.
Structures do not raise standards, people do. But well-designed structures allow expertise to grow, talent to flourish and improvement to sustain itself over time.
I was often asked variations of the “too big / too small” question.
How large should a trust be? How many trusts should there be in a place? My honest answer was usually: we know what too small looks like, but we don’t yet know what too big is. And in many places, there were simply too many trusts.
At Lift Schools, we have spent the last two years grappling seriously with these questions.
We operate nationally, across multiple regions and local authorities, but we are unapologetically local in our impact.
That is not accidental. It has required deliberate choices: creating coherent regions, clarifying accountability and governance, and ensuring that our regional directors carry responsibility equivalent to CEOs of similarly-sized trusts, while benefiting from national scale and resilience.
Highly specialist provision benefits from depth
This is what I mean by intentional design: shaping organisations so they serve children, staff and communities, not asking people to contort themselves around inherited structures.
It is also why we have recently taken the difficult decision to explore transferring our two schools for children with profound and multiple learning disabilities (PMLD) and severe learning difficulties (SLD), Lift Columbus and Lift Pioneer, to a specialist SEND trust, The Bridge MAT.
Pioneer is outstanding and widely respected. Columbus has come through a challenging period and is now on a much stronger footing.
The decision has been taken because, on reflection, we do not believe that the long-term needs of pupils with profound and complex needs are best served within a predominantly mainstream trust, however strong its inclusive intent.
Highly specialist provision benefits from depth: SEND-specific leadership pathways, peer networks, professional learning communities and system infrastructure designed explicitly around complex needs.
We believe both schools will be better served within a trust whose sole purpose is to serve young people with complex and very specialist needs, and where their expertise can both benefit from, and contribute to, a vibrant specialist ecosystem.
This moment demands humility
This is what system maturity should look like, recognising complementary strengths, not competing identities. Collaboration that is structural, not rhetorical.
As we enter a period of renewed focus on SEND reform nationally, these questions will only intensify.
How do we organise the system so that expertise is not diluted? How do we balance scale with specialism? How do we avoid confusing growth with success?
Above all, what leadership does this moment demand of us?
For trust leaders and boards, it demands humility. The willingness to say, “this school may now be better served elsewhere.”
For regulators and policymakers, it demands clarity of vision about the role of trusts and the shape of the system we are collectively building. For all of us, it demands the courage to prioritise coherence over comfort.
Intentional design is not about perfection. It is about stewardship. And if, in 2030, someone does look back at the system we shaped, I hope they will see not just growth, but wisdom and ambition for young people.
Perhaps the harder truth is this – if every trust believes it must be able to do everything, we will end up doing too many things thinly, rather than a few things really well.
A mature school system should allow for specialisation without stigma and for divestment without failure narratives. That is true stewardship.
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