If I had to do it all over again, would I start an academy trust? No. But also - yes. Let me explain.
Had I known six years ago about the wear and tear it would have on colleagues whom I value as professionals and love as people, and that the job would completely take over many of our lives for two-and-a-half years, working from 6am to 9pm, I would not have done it.
But when I reflect on how good the trust has become, I can’t help but feel delighted that we took the plunge - so yes, I would do it all again. For those thinking of setting up a trust, or growing one from a single-academy trust perhaps, here’s what I would have wanted to know all those years ago.
Creating an academy trust: learn from others
One of the core challenges in those early days was there’s no manual for how to start and develop a successful trust; nothing that sets out what “good” looks like or that says what to expect, how to grow to maximise opportunities and offer schools what you want to offer.
I was a teacher. I didn’t know how to build a charity. It would have been useful to be linked with a successful trust - to avoid reinventing wheels and to learn from others’ experience - but that opportunity just didn’t exist.
Now the system is big enough for it to be easier to take the initiative and seek out those relationships yourself. So if you’re thinking about growth, make sure to take advantage of this, rather than reinventing the wheel - again.
Embrace businesspeople
My expertise was in education practice not business practice, nor how to run an organisation of central services that was constantly growing.
While being in a trust is an opportunity to become leaner and more efficient, like any business aims to be, we would have benefited greatly from expert external experience, allowing us to be more efficient from the outset.
My advice to others is to read business-orientated case study books, such as The Founder’s Mentality by Chris Zook and James Allen; seek out business mentors; and get businesspeople on your board who can see risk as an opportunity not purely a threat. To help source the right people, build a network with local businesses, charities and healthcare organisations.
Think hard about accountability
As CEO and accounting officer, it is terrifying to think about how responsible I am for ensuring that we have the capacity to build reserves, for the pension liability we now have or for the capital risk I’ve taken on - not to mention all the work around safeguarding, Ofsted inspections and assessments.
All this work meant that we had to spend two-and-a-half years focused on compliance, rather than focusing on school improvement to the extent that we would have wished.
I underestimated how big a step it would be to move away from the known safety nets provided by local authorities in order to create your own (though it was eventually worth it).
If I had known all of this, I would have taken more strategic advice and time for reflection at the start so I could have got my head around this more. Getting the right people on your board early on will help you do this.
This is an area where policymakers should do more to help, too, by streamlining the accountability system. It feels to me that like there is currently over-compliance based on historical events from an entirely different iteration of the system, and the sector is now paying for early failures in an unhelpful way.
Make sure you have a ‘Mags’
The key thing for me from my experiences in those early years, and my best recommendation for anyone else, is to make sure that you aren’t going through this alone.
You need someone who will be with you through thick and thin, who will challenge and support you and who will be there to bounce ideas around with, to make you laugh and tell you it’s time to go home.
I am eternally grateful to our director of education, Mags Clarke, for that, and a host of other brilliant people that I am lucky enough to have around me. If you don’t have a Mags, find one. Otherwise, CEO is a lonely role.
Find your way to the other side
For the first two-and-a-half years it can feel like a slog at times - but then it all changes.
New systems, strategies and efficiencies for how we do things, together with training for staff in how to do them, start to kick in and everything starts to flow.
Proving that we were compliant and solvent to the Department for Education and the Education and Skills Funding Agency through strongly positive audits gained us a little breathing space, as we were no longer figuring out compliance.
With that done, we could focus on the work that we truly love, sharpening our thinking on school improvement and delivering for pupils.
You may not have exactly the same time frames on your growth journey, but just know that while laying foundations is tough, it allows you build something brilliant on top.
Appreciate how far you’ve come
The Beckmead Trust is now formed of 11 special and alternative provision schools, working exclusively with children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND).
We also have schools interested in joining us, including “outstanding” schools, and our growth and scale mean our expertise is clearly evidenced across settings, giving us a strong status within the SEND sector - an absolute privilege.
I hope anyone who embarks on a trust journey reaches a similar position. It’s not easy and there will be long meetings and some sleepless nights.
But when you reach a point at which you can stop and reflect on what you’ve achieved, you’ll understand why if someone asks you if you would do it all again, you’ll find yourself saying “no…and yes”.
Dr Jonty Clark OBE is chief executive of The Beckmead Trust
