The Latest News
Operational change
28th April 2025
As our trust continues to grow, we have been considering ways to ensure that we continue to provide our schools with high quality yet cost effective services in areas outside of the classroom such as finance, HR, IT, governance, health and safety, estates and compliance.
Over recent years, the requirements relating to these areas have increased significantly given the wider awareness in the sector of matters such as safeguarding, and increased government regulation in areas such as data protection and public sector procurement. We have also become a much larger organisation which increases the importance of managing these areas robustly, as a problem in one school would not only impact the pupils in that school, but could become a liability to all the other schools in the trust. One way to address this is to employ ever larger numbers of specialist staff both in individual schools and the central team, but this would prevent us from focussing our resources on front-line education.
We have therefore been looking for a different way to provide these non-classroom based services - looking to balance the need to be efficient with a desire to support schools as effectively as possible. As a trust that values being 'Better Together', we believe that this will be achieved by helping our schools work more closely together to share specialist staff across a 'hub' of schools. This will provide all schools with access to specialist expertise while sharing the roles across the whole hub, avoiding a disproportionate cost to any individual school.
Trustees have decided that the trust should setup 3-4 hubs across the organisation, through which we will deliver most support functions (eg Finance, HR, estates, compliance etc) alongside some of our trust educational support. Staff who currently fulfil these roles in schools will continue to do so but would do so via the 'hubs', so would work as part of a team supporting a group of schools rather than just one school. These teams will be grouped according to specialism (eg Finance, HR etc), so some more 'generalist' roles may need to be amended to align to a particular specialist area. We hope that this change will increase the specialist expertise available to schools while also providing staff with greater opportunities to work as part of a larger team and to develop a career path in their chosen area. We recognise that some services - for example the school office - are best delivered at school-level, and expect to retain this arrangement through this process.
The aim of this process is not to save money or to reduce the number of staff working in these areas. We do not anticipate a reduction in staff numbers, and do not expect a direct financial saving at this stage - although we do hope that this model will increase the range of services that the trust can provide to schools which may indirectly save funds. We believe that this model will prove to be more efficient as the trust grows, meaning that we can benefit from economy of scale, not needing to employ as many additional staff to support further growth the trust in future.
We recognise that any change process like this will cause uncertainty for the staff affected, and that while some individuals will be excited by the opportunities offered by a more specialist role, others may be disappointed by the prospect of their roles potentially changing. We are committed to working with individual staff to understand their needs and aspirations, and to help them find the most suitable roles within our new hub structure. Potentially affected staff are already aware of this process; we will be discussing the proposal with them further this term and inviting their feedback as we seek to define the most effective staffing model for the future. We expect the changes to come into effect during the 25/26 academic year.
The trust is focussed on achieving the best outcomes for children and young people - the aim of this change is to use our resources as effectively as possible and to support school leaders, allowing them to provide the best possible educational experience within their schools.
As our trust continues to grow, we have been considering ways to ensure that we continue to provide our schools with high quality yet cost effective services in areas outside of the classroom such as finance, HR, IT, governance, health and safety, estates and compliance.
Over recent years, the requirements relating to these areas have increased significantly given the wider awareness in the sector of matters such as safeguarding, and increased government regulation in areas such as data protection and public sector procurement. We have also become a much larger organisation which increases the importance of managing these areas robustly, as a problem in one school would not only impact the pupils in that school, but could become a liability to all the other schools in the trust. One way to address this is to employ ever larger numbers of specialist staff both in individual schools and the central team, but this would prevent us from focussing our resources on front-line education.
We have therefore been looking for a different way to provide these non-classroom based services - looking to balance the need to be efficient with a desire to support schools as effectively as possible. As a trust that values being 'Better Together', we believe that this will be achieved by helping our schools work more closely together to share specialist staff across a 'hub' of schools. This will provide all schools with access to specialist expertise while sharing the roles across the whole hub, avoiding a disproportionate cost to any individual school.
Trustees have decided that the trust should setup 3-4 hubs across the organisation, through which we will deliver most support functions (eg Finance, HR, estates, compliance etc) alongside some of our trust educational support. Staff who currently fulfil these roles in schools will continue to do so but would do so via the 'hubs', so would work as part of a team supporting a group of schools rather than just one school. These teams will be grouped according to specialism (eg Finance, HR etc), so some more 'generalist' roles may need to be amended to align to a particular specialist area. We hope that this change will increase the specialist expertise available to schools while also providing staff with greater opportunities to work as part of a larger team and to develop a career path in their chosen area. We recognise that some services - for example the school office - are best delivered at school-level, and expect to retain this arrangement through this process.
The aim of this process is not to save money or to reduce the number of staff working in these areas. We do not anticipate a reduction in staff numbers, and do not expect a direct financial saving at this stage - although we do hope that this model will increase the range of services that the trust can provide to schools which may indirectly save funds. We believe that this model will prove to be more efficient as the trust grows, meaning that we can benefit from economy of scale, not needing to employ as many additional staff to support further growth the trust in future.
We recognise that any change process like this will cause uncertainty for the staff affected, and that while some individuals will be excited by the opportunities offered by a more specialist role, others may be disappointed by the prospect of their roles potentially changing. We are committed to working with individual staff to understand their needs and aspirations, and to help them find the most suitable roles within our new hub structure. Potentially affected staff are already aware of this process; we will be discussing the proposal with them further this term and inviting their feedback as we seek to define the most effective staffing model for the future. We expect the changes to come into effect during the 25/26 academic year.
The trust is focussed on achieving the best outcomes for children and young people - the aim of this change is to use our resources as effectively as possible and to support school leaders, allowing them to provide the best possible educational experience within their schools.
