Academy Partnership for Colchester

1. Background on StanwayFederationAcademy Trust

The Stanway Federation Academy Trust is a multi-academy trust operating two academiesin the West and South of Colchester; StanwaySchool and ThomasLordAudleySchool. It has a total of 1,800 pupils, over 300 staff and combined revenues of £11 million.

The Trust was established in March 2012 but its journey to that point and its recent successes demonstrate why it is well-equipped to be a very effective sponsor of under-performing schools, an attractive partner to effective schools and as a systems leader to raise standards in the local family of schools.

StanwaySchool has been judged Good by Ofsted in three successive inspections (2007, 2010 and 2013) under the leadership of Executive Headteacher, Jonathan Tippett. Its Key Stage 4 results have improved steadily over that period and the school is highly regarded among parents. It is over-subscribed each year and only pupils from its 11 feeder schools are able to secure a place.

ThomasLordAudleySchool had been placed in special Measures by Ofsted in September 2005 and, following several section 8 inspections, Stanway’s Executive Headteacher took over leadership in January 2007, initially spending 60% of his time running the school. In October 2008 Thomas Lord Audley was judged Satisfactory by Ofsted. Since 2008 Key Stage 4 results have improved substantially from below floor target to the 2012 national average of 58%. In parallel, the school became part of a hard federation with StanwaySchool under a single governing body.

Alderman Blaxill was a similarly under-performing school with falling pupil numbers that went into Special Measures in May 2007. Stanway’s Executive Headteacher was appointed to run the school in January 2008. In February 2009 the school was out of category and has been so since. However, the school is due to close in July 2014 as part of a Local Authority re-organisation. It was part of the Stanway Federation until March 2012 when Stanway and Thomas Lord Audley converted to academy status. The school’s governing body is made up of Stanway Federation governors and the Trust is overseeing the closure.

This growth of the federation, now Trust, through a willingness and ability to support under-performing schools is under-pinned by four key factors;

1. Governing Body that retains a strategic role in monitoring and challenging the performance of schools and their leadership
2. Deep culture of leadership development that enables effective middle and senior leaders to take on new roles within the Trust
3. Focus on strong management of school, staff and pupil performance through clear frameworks and effective use of data
4. Delegation of responsibility and accountability to the most appropriate people to engineer the desired change

2. StanwayFederationAcademy Trust and the local schools landscape

The Trust is also part of the North East Essex Education Partnership (NEEEP) which is a hybrid academy umbrella trust. It has five other academy trusts as members and a total of seven schools. It was established with DfE approval in March 2012 and has already proven itself effective in supporting its academies.

The Trust is a leading member of both the North East Essex Teaching School Alliance and the Colchester Teacher Training Consortium (CTTC). The CPD model developed by Stanway was first taken up by CTTC and is evolving to become a key part of the Teaching School Alliance programme. This CPD model explicitly linkstraining to the performance objectives of individual teachers and is evaluated by its impact on pupil attainment and progress. The training is delivered on-site at schools and has proven highly effective in improving, retaining and motivating staff as well as being very cost-efficient.

The Trust has helped CTTC bid for and secure significant numbers of Schools Direct places and salary grants enabling more high level graduates to train and re-train as teachers.

3. StanwayFederationAcademy Trust and primary schools.

There are 25 primary, junior and infantschools that are determined as being in the catchment areas of StanwaySchool, Thomas Lord Audley and Alderman Blaxill.

The Trust has always worked hard to support all its primary schools through their Local Delivery Groups and clusters. For the last year the Trust has facilitated meetings to discuss greater partnership between primary schools possibly linked to academy status. However, the stumbling block has been the reluctance of strong primary schools to become accountable for under-performing schools when their resources are under increasing pressure, combined with the perceived loss of autonomy that multi-academy trust status suggests. While some under-performing schools have proposed links to secondary schools the stronger primary schools want to understand more clearly the benefits for their pupils and staff.

The challenge for the Trust is that the communities all these schools serve are diverse socio-demographically and economically, ranging from deprived housing estates to affluent villages. Of the 11 Stanway feeder primary and junior schools all but two are judged Good or Outstanding. By contrast of the 14 feeders to Thomas Lord Audley/Alderman Blaxill only 5 are judged Good(see Appendix C).The difference in potential cohorts is even more explicit when looking at Key Stage 2 attainment data.

4. The Trust’s Vision & Goals

4.1 Vision

The Trust has a vision for a family of schools that offers children and young people aged 3-16 an excellent education regardless of their starting point in life or where they live. The family of schools will principally serve the communities of West and South Colchester.

The Trust will be a learning community of school leaders, teachers and support staff working in schools that are at least judged Good by Ofsted. The quality of teaching and learning will be excellent in every school, phase, class and subject.

Every child will achieve the appropriate national standards through every phase and will benefit from a unified curriculum framework that enables consistent progress and enjoyable learning.

The staff will benefit from a professional development framework that enhances their skills, improves teaching, supports their career and impacts on pupil attainment and progress. In particular the Trust will have a highly capable cadre of senior and middle leaders able to coach, challenge and develop staff.

4.2 Goals

The Trust will have the following goals

• Every child has access to an excellent education from 3-16 through all phases
• Every child achieves at least national average at KS1, KS2 and KS4
• Every school is at least Good and a proportion are Outstanding
• Every member of staff is judged at least Good in their role.

4.3 Growth

The Trust plans to recruit up to eight primary schools so that there are a total of 10 academies run by the Trust. The Trust will sponsor principally under-performing primary schools but, to ensure that the Trust has sufficient capacity to support under-performing schools, the aim is that at least half the schools will be Good. Therefore the pace and scale of growth will depend on the success in encouraging such schools to join the Trust.

The Trust proposes that the first school to be sponsored is Monkwick Junior School, a feeder school to Thomas Lord Audley, which has recently been given a grade 4 by Ofsted (the report is yet to be published).

To achieve this, the Trust must attract Good and Outstanding primary schools that are willing to work with under-performing primary schools, by developing a package of clear benefits including

• Clear frameworks of autonomy linked to school performance, offering Good and Outstanding schools equal status in the Trust
• Membership of a highly capable, mutually supportive leadership group
• Highly impactful professional development programmes for staff and governors
• Proven frameworks for assessment and development of the quality of teaching
• Access to effective capacity and resources to drive school improvement
• Sharing in , learning from and developing best practice in pedagogy, teaching and learning
• Access to cost-efficient, high quality school business management support and services

If more than eight primary schools want to join the Trust it will consider creating two parallel organisations that organise the primary schools around their link secondary school. Should any of the primary, junior and infant schools choose to join another multi-academy trust the Trust would be happy to work in partnership.

To meet the forecast local demand for secondary school places from 2017 and ensure more of the pupils that attend the Trust’s feeder schools can go their preferred secondary school, the Trust also has plans to use the Alderman Blaxill site from 2017 to operate a campus of StanwaySchool or to create a new FreeSchool.

5. The Trust’s Strategies

In simple terms the Trust’s over-arching strategy is to develop the appropriate expertise, resources and systems to be able to support primary phase schools.

Although many of the principles of governance, operation and performance management that the Trust has successfully developed for its secondary schools are transferrable to primary phases, the Trust recognises that there are important differences in teaching, learning and curriculum that it must understand, learn and integrate.

The Trust also recognises that its models of governance and performance management need to be adapted to work for a larger number of academies. This work has to be done first so that the Trust can explain clearly to primary schools their accountability, responsibility and autonomy. The initial work with primary schools around partnership and academy status highlighted how important this clarity is in enabling Governing Bodies to decide whether joining the Trust is right for them.

Equally, primary schools need to be involved in the development of the models of governance, operation and performance management. Therefore the Trust will ask one or two of the Good primary schools to be involved in this development without necessarily committing themselves to join the Trust.

The five key Trust strategies to achieve the vision and goals are:

5.1Teaching, learning and performance management

• Develop a primary phase-driven school & pupil performance MIS system to enable effective monitoring of attainment and progress in and between schools
• Develop a primary phase-driven teaching & learning framework to assess, monitor and improve the quality of teaching
• Develop a performance driven toolkit to establish a baseline of performance within a school
• Develop effective models for primary teaching and learning
• Develop curriculum and pupil support models to smooth learner transition between Key Stages
• Develop 3-16 curriculum for Maths and English

5.2 Professional development & HR

• Develop a leadership CPD programme including Masters level qualifications and the NationalCollege of Leadership & Teaching professional qualifications in middle leadership (NPQML), senior leadership (NPQSL) and headship (NPQH).
• Develop a teaching CPD programme aligned to the quality of teaching and learning framework based on workshops, 1-to-1 and small group coaching/mentoring and secondments
• Coordinate common inset days for all schools in the Trust
• Create a career management programme to enable the Trust to recruit, retain and promote staff and school leaders
• Develop Trust-wide HR policies including performance and pay

5.3Governance

• Develop key strategies and supporting documents to support the effective governance of primary schools within the Trust
• Guidance on the role, accountability, responsibility and composition of Local Governing Bodies based on the strength of the school
• Template key documents such as LGB Terms of Reference and Schemes of Delegation
• Governor self-evaluation tools to understand the skills, expertise and knowledge of individual Governors and identify strengths and weaknesses of each GB
• Develop governor training programme to enhance the effectiveness of oversight and challenge
• Performance management
• Strategic planning
• Personnel & HR
• Financial management

5.4Financial & Operational management

• Develop Trust-wide operational procedures covering Safeguarding, Health & Safety, Asset Management,
• Develop Trust wide financial procedures, policies and processes including Schemes of Delegation
• Research, assess and identify a suitable financial software system for all academies
• Develop consistent models for financial planning and reporting including Charts of Accounts, Cost Centre and nominal codes
• Design and implement financial reporting procedures to support the Trust Board
• Identify and procure Trust-wide services to improve cost-efficiency and quality of service

5.5 School Action Plans

For each sponsored academy the Trust will develop, implement and monitor a School Action Plan through the following process:

• Review the most recent Ofsted reportsand identify key improvements needed
• Review of school and leadership performance with Headteacher
• Establish the current baseline of school performance with Headteacher and Governing Body (using the toolkit developed as part of strategy 5.1)
• Assess the Quality of Teaching for each phase, year group and class by key subject (using the toolkit developed as part of strategy 5.1)
• Develop with the Headteacher a school action plan to address Ofsted key improvements with 3 month, 6 month and 1 year targets and strategies. To include costed resource requirements and Headteacher and leadership performance objectives

6. Leadership & Resources

The Trust operates a leadership structure that combines strategic management of performance, operations and resources with delegated operational management to each school’s leadership team.

The Executive Headteacher, Jonathan Tippett, is ultimately responsible to the Trust Board for Stanway and Thomas Lord Audley schools.

The Trust has recently appointed a substantive Headteacher at Thomas Lord Audley, Helena Boast, who has been involved in the school’s leadership since it became part of the original federation. The two Deputy Headteachers at Thomas Lord Audley have been seconded from StanwaySchool for the last two years and that team has been instrumental in the school’s rapid improvement.

The extremely high standards at StanwaySchool have been maintained over this period because of the ongoing development of a high quality senior leadership teamat the school. There are three Deputy Headteachers that report to the Executive Headteacher.

The Trust operates a Strategic Management Group that brings together the senior leaders across the two schools. This group has two key roles: monitoring, challenging and improving individual and collective school performance and developing and sharing best practice in teaching, learning and curriculum.

To ensure strong accountability for all its member schools the Trust has three strategies

1. The Trust plans to evolve the membership of the Strategic Management Group to include the primary Headteachers and its role in strategic challenge will continue. It will also oversee the programmes to smooth learner transition between stages and the 3-16 curriculum pathways for English and Maths.
2. A primary Headteacher group will be created to focus on improving performance of primary schools. As well monitoring, challenging and planning school improvement this group will play a critical role in planning and coordinating support from the strong performing schools for the under-performing schools.
3. The Executive Headteacher will have regular 1-to-1 supervision meetings with every Headteacher to review, plan and improve school performance. This working relationship will be shaped by the needs of each Headteacher and each school. Headteachers of under-performing schools will have much greater challenge and support including support from Headteachers of Good or Outstanding schools.

7. Governance

7.1 Planning for growth

The Trust Board has proved effective in fulfilling its strategic oversight and challenge over two secondary academies and an associated secondary school. However, the Trust recognises that its models for governance and performance management need to be adapted to work for a larger number of primary academies. (The profiles of the five members are included in appendix A.)

The Trust plans that primary schools joining the Trust will have their own Local Governing Body. The autonomy, accountability and responsibility will be set out in Terms of Reference and Schemes of Delegation. These documents will set out the authority of the Local Governing Body in the following key areas:

1.Representation on the Trust Board

2.Local Governing Body composition and appointment including Chair

3.Appointment of the Headteacher, Senior Leadership and staff and their performance management

1. Staff structure, resources and management
2. Targets for pupil achievement
3. Curriculum, teaching and learning
4. Staff-related policies
5. Pupil-related policies
6. Child protection
7. Admissions
8. Budgets and financial management

12.Management of land, buildings and assets and capital investment

13.Compliance with legislation and regulation

There will be two levels of authority for Local Governing Bodies which will be dependent on the strength of the school where Level 1 indicates strong and Level 2 indicates needing support. This will be determined by their most recent Ofsted grade but will also be linked to the school’s performance against agreed targets.