Growth is on the minds of many CEOs and trust boards across the country.
As a trust that has been on a long growth journey and now sits at over 60 schools, we at REAch2 know all about what such growth entails, warts and all.
And while not all trusts will reach our scale, those that do find themselves on a growth trajectory will no doubt encounter similar issues to those we have faced and the questions of how to solve them.
Here are some of the key lessons we have learned that may well be useful to others - whether as a direct lift-and-shift idea or to spark inspiration about how to address their own context-specific challenges.
The challenges of academy trust growth
1. Transformation schools
One of the most notable changes we made came around six years ago following a challenging and turbulent time for one of our primary schools.
As we worked to solve these issues, we realised that we were not systematically working in a joined-up way across our service teams (education, finance, estates, HR, IT, marketing, etc) but in silos.
If a school was facing a single challenge that was fine, but when it came to multiple, complex issues we were not bringing together our full firepower and so school improvement wasn’t happening fast enough.
To fix this we put in place what we call our “transformation schools” approach. This means that where a school has multiple challenges, it automatically becomes a transformation school.
All services staff know that if they get a call or an email about a transformation school, it is a “drop everything” moment and this work gets prioritised.
Complementing this, we introduced a new risk framework capable of picking up schools facing multiple issues. We prioritise the scrutiny of this at both trust board and committee levels.
This “balcony view” of our schools means that there are no surprises lurking in the system any more - our self-evaluation forms (SEFs) are accurate, and we’ve been able to predict every single time what the Ofsted outcome will be for each school.
What’s more, since introducing this model in 2019, we have not had a single school go into a category of either special measures or serious weaknesses.
2. Moving models
Secondly, having gone through a period of rapid growth from 2012 to 2018, we moved from a regional model to a cluster model of oversight.
With 60 schools, it had become increasingly apparent that the spans of control were way too wide for three regional directors.
Instead, we introduced the role of deputy director of education, who would be responsible for school improvement of a cluster of around six to eight schools. This allowed these individuals to really scrutinise and know their schools.
Changing models is not an overnight job but as you grow it is important to ensure that you have the right set-up for your needs.
3. Rigorous recruitment
In the early years of REAch2’s growth, we occasionally fell into the trap of “someone is better than no one” when appointing a headteacher.
But this is one of single most important decisions you take as trust leader, so if you aren’t sure then don’t appoint. Run multiple interview rounds if you have to.
That may sound like a big ask, but it saves untold amounts of time, hassle and energy by avoiding appointing the wrong person. We also ensure that either myself or our director of education is on any appointing panel - which for a period of time was not always happening.
We also have an iron-clad ban on backfilling headships - so under no circumstances do our deputy directors of education act as heads of schools where we have vacancies.
If they did it would create a risk to the other schools that our deputy directors are responsible for. To avoid this we look for solutions within our other local schools and/or use an executive headteacher model in the short term.
4. The art of induction
When we do appoint we have made induction a key part of the process.
This means that I visit every new leader within their first term, and look at a whole range of areas, including checking their clarity of vision for the school, how they communicate that and how that fits with the REAch2 vision.
We also have three separate periods of probation lasting for three terms, and we RAG (red, amber, green) rate each new leader during this time to take a view on what areas they need to develop and how we can support them.
5. Long-term planning
Lastly we have introduced a more systematic and long-term planning approach to the delivery of trust-wide learning and development activities, such as with our reading strategy and training for all teaching assistants on adaptive teaching.
In the past we have attempted whole-trust rollout of CPD using external companies. But delivering at our scale brought variation in quality, logistical headaches and additional costs that can now be saved by doing this all ourselves.
These are just some of the major changes we have made over the years and there will, of course, be more as we grow and mature further as an organisation. We will continue to share our own learning in the hope that some of this is helpful to others.
Cathie Paine is CEO of REAch2 multi-academy trust
