We would be interested to hear from any primary school, secondary school or small multi-academy trust in the North West that is considering joining a strong trust. To see if you’re a good fit for our Trust we’ve created a helpful checklist which you can find here. We currently have member schools operating in Bolton, Liverpool, South Sefton & Warrington and work across the north of England through our Behaviour and EdTech hub MAT role.
The educational landscape in England is changing at an unprecedented pace, resulting in schools gaining greater autonomy. However, greater autonomy should not, in our view, mean greater isolation. Rather, we at Great Schools Trust see this as an exciting opportunity to foster greater collaboration between providers and develop new and novel partnerships with other schools and trusts for the benefit of our students and our communities.
What we believe
As educational leaders, we believe that the legacy we pass to our successors are communities in better conditions than we found them, more capable of meeting educational needs and preparing children to be upwardly-mobile citizens. The Trust’s aim is ultimately to enable each of its schools to become successful and outstanding academies, producing great educational outcomes and experiences for all its students. This is the core of who we are at the Great Schools Trust and driving this core is our vision for education, for which we must train, trust and empower our people so that through the influence of education, future generations will be more successful.
Our Operating Model
To achieve this, we provide a supportive and collaborative context in which our schools can collaborate and thrive into the future through our ‘Faculty of Education’ approach, which encourages each of our academies to contribute as partners within the Trust leadership structure. Every academy is an equal partner, every principal has a seat on the Trust Leadership Team and every Vice Principal/Deputy has a seat on the trust’s Quality Alliance Team.
The job of our trust’s central team whom we call the trust’s Faculty for Education is to ensure that our academy leaders have all the necessary support they require for their schools and students to thrive and flourish. At Great Schools Trust, we believe all parents should be able to access outstanding education for their children, Trusts, therefore, have a moral duty to ensure their students become high-performing and well-rounded citizens. As such, we are wholly committed to ensuring that every school in our Trust receives the level of training, resource and support which is proportionate to their need and stage of their improvement journey.
Our Core Function
The Trust has three main functions in that we support our academies in meeting the challenges of our high expectations ethos through mutually supportive intervention and training. Secondly, we take responsibility for financial and resource management, so that academies can concentrate on what matters - the quality of teaching in the classroom, and thirdly, because our specialism is the development of character through leadership, we support each academy in the nurturing of this distinctive ethos, which contributes so powerfully to the development of our students as rounded and balanced young people poised to contribute to society.
Our values-based approach to education and our specialism of character through leadership are really important to us, as they will be for those interested in working with us. The work we do in this arena must empower our children to believe that they can achieve anything in life and we want our students and staff to enjoy their work, have fun and be successful through the strong relationships we know a values and character-based approach enables.