One of our founding beliefs at Ormiston is that we work where the challenge is greatest, and we embrace that challenge. It is the essence of what the trust system was set up to do, and it motivates so many of us who choose to work where we do. In an education system that too often incentivises the wrong things, moral purpose and values must drive decisions, putting the most challenging schools and the most vulnerable children first. Last week brought a very different challenge for our trust, as we dealt with the deeply sad news of the death of our chair, Julius Weinberg. Julius was many things to me: a chair, a mentor and a teacher. He was a wise man who cared deeply about education and understood the responsibility that comes with leading organisations such as ours. The decisions I write about here are ones Julius and I discussed many times. I know he would have encouraged me to write openly about the choices we have made and why we believe they are in the best interests of children. That feels particularly important because, as well as knowing when to take on challenges, leadership can also mean knowing when to let go. That is the thinking behind our decision to transfer two of our schools to other trusts. Ambitious to grow We remain ambitious to improve and grow, and to take on challenging schools where we know we can make a difference. But if trusts exist to serve schools and children rather than the other way around, we also must recognise when another trust is better placed to provide what a school needs next. When Ormiston took on many of its schools, we did so in a system that looked very different to today’s. In many parts of the country there was little local trust capacity, and schools – often in isolated areas – needed expertise, leadership and support that simply wasn’t available locally. National trusts such as ours stepped into that gap. But the system has matured. Strong local trusts have grown, clusters of schools have developed real depth, and capacity now exists where it was once scarce. That should change some of the decisions trusts make. We should pay more attention to place – where trusts grow, how schools connect with the institutions around them and, sometimes, whether a school would be better served in a different trust. This is increasingly reflected in government policy, with greater emphasis on schools as anchors in their communities, collaboration and place. For trusts, it means looking beyond institutional growth and asking what will genuinely work best for individual schools and their communities. Two transfers This thinking sits behind our two transfers. In one case, a local trust was already providing additional leadership capacity and improvement support, and the transfer formalises a relationship that was working well. In the other, after years of work to stabilise and strengthen the school, we recognised that another trust with different expertise and a different school improvement network is better placed to provide what it needs next. Geography has influenced these decisions, but hasn’t been the deciding factor. Nor should it be. These are different schools with different needs. What connects them is a single question: which trust can give this school the support, expertise and capacity it needs to succeed? Recognising that another trust may sometimes be better placed to do that should be a sign of a mature system, not something trusts feel they must defend. None of this diminishes the case for national trusts. Ormiston runs 45 schools serving more than 35,000 pupils across England, and we will continue to grow and develop our work nationally. Scale helps us build capacity, learn what is working in different areas and share it elsewhere. But local density matters too. In Wolverhampton, for example, our relationship with the local authority has helped to create a new SEND resource base in response to local need. Specialist provision We see similar benefits across our clusters elsewhere, such as London, where we run both specialist autism and alternative provision. National scale and strong local clusters both matter. But the interests of an individual school and its community must come first. Trusts should grow where they are strong, where they have good relationships and where they know they can make a difference. They should also be willing to say when another organisation is better placed to take a school forward. That, I believe, is part of “advancing education for public benefit”, the objective written into so many of our governing articles of association. This is not about walking away from responsibility. In these circumstances, it is the responsible decision. As trust leaders, our responsibility extends beyond the organisations we lead. We are stewards of a wider school system. Our first responsibility is to children, and growth is not an end in itself. So at Ormiston, we will continue to work where the challenges are greatest. We will grow and take on challenging schools where we believe we can make a difference. But a mature trust system must also be open to consolidation and change, and we should be confident enough to embrace that when it is right for a school.