Lucy Powell’s commitment to a “more supportive and understanding” accountability system for schools is welcome. Addressing the wellbeing and mental health toll of inspections on school leaders is important. The government should also keep this is mind for the trust inspection system it is developing, particularly if we are to avoid a trap in which this simply adds more pressure to trusts on top of their individual schools’ inspections. A strong start would be ensuring the purpose of the inspections is clear and that the scope of what they’re evaluating is something useful for trusts that they can see the value in. Something which identifies the real strengths that drive successful outcomes for pupils and the areas for development that will actually move the organisation forward. But you can’t do that if you aren’t considering operations along with educational provision. The case for including operational excellence as a core dimension of trust quality is straightforward. We cannot ask schools and trusts to improve outcomes for vulnerable young people whilst treating operational leadership as peripheral. The strongest trusts already know this and recognise that financial sustainability, governance quality, capable leadership, risk management and workforce strategy don’t just support improvement, they make improvement possible. If we want a resilient system, we need trusts that weather crises, recruit and retain talent, invest in infrastructure and sustain improvement over years. They must also be led by people who understand that strategy, education, finance, people and estates cannot be treated as separate conversations. Shared purpose Strong trusts bring together educational and operational leaders around a shared purpose to improve outcomes for pupils. This need is particularly acute now. Schools and trusts are operating in conditions of unprecedented complexity. Financial pressure is constant, workforce shortages are structural, population change is reshaping demand and technology is transforming everything. A meaningful assessment of trust strength cannot ignore these realities or pretend they do not shape what improvement looks like. Most trusts are doing difficult things well and delivering transformation as a result. A trust inspection system that creates space only to identify failure or that only looks at education in isolation from operations will miss the point entirely. The operational excellence review that Centre for Education Operational Excellence has developed is built on extensive research, evidence and work with hundreds of schools and trusts. It identifies what strong operational leadership looks like and its role in school improvement, and it is grounded in what works on the ground for trusts and schools in their contexts. It provides a strong basis for considering how trust inspection is designed. We look at a trust’s leadership approach in how it makes decisions, manages risk, deploys resources, develops people and governs itself, and whether that is fit for purpose and creating the conditions for sustainable improvement. Identifying strengths Trusts that have undertaken our reviews are identifying real strengths in how they operate, alongside the practical solutions that free up capacity. The reviews show what is working well operationally, not just where the gaps are. It is clear that when operational systems work properly, they don’t just avoid being a barrier to improvement, they actively enable leaders to focus on what matters most. That recognition of existing strength, combined with targeted improvement, is what sustainable change looks like. These reviews are useful, supportive and welcomed by the trusts we work with. Leaders feel like we’re there to help them celebrate what’s great and make sure they’re not missing ways to improve. We’re not there to cause stress, we’re there to ease it by making sure operational choke points can be cleared and areas of friction smoothed. There is still time for government to get trust inspection right from the start. That means building inspection around a clear definition of what a strong trust actually needs to do (and feasibly can do in their context and within the funding and resources available) and recognising that educational excellence and operational excellence are inextricably connected. The government has the opportunity to define what supportive accountability actually means at trust level. That means an inspection framework that assesses the whole picture, including what a trust achieves, how it is built and how it creates the conditions for educational excellence.