Glaston - 'The campus': pursuing trust school status

Case study

Summary

Many issues have conspired to make this a difficult journey to trust status, and this primary and secondary partnership faces tough decisions on leadership and structural issues to secure success.

Key learning/outcomes

Dedicated individuals have worked hard at collaborative partnerships and have sought to engage with the local community for over a decade to raise aspirations and improve transition.
Progress has been hampered by legal, financial and staffing issues but the shared vision of community regeneration and life-long learning has kept the process on track.
Collaborative practice to date has mainly been at managerial level, with the schools sharing a business manager and various contracts. This is set to extend to more cross-phase initiatives.
It is hoped that working practices from previous successful partnerships can be employed in the new trust, for example residential courses for staff, learning coaches and cross-phase teaching.
Staff development will be central to the ethos of the school and with their University partner they are well placed for teacher training and continued professional development.
With two new academies competing for cohorts, and the pressure to prove successful without the additional funding that academies receive, marketing and community support for the trust will be key.

Background

Glaston Primary School and Patchfield Engineering Community College share more than a decade of collaborative working. The partner schools are located in an area of significant social and economic deprivation and occupy a 60 acre site shared with part of a further education college. Pupils make satisfactory progress in both schools despite overall standards being below national averages.

The schools are due to become a trust school from January 2009 and will be housed in their newly built premises along with a special school. The College refused the academy route in order to pursue the 3-19 project it had established with Glaston. The community had signed up to the idea of all-through provision and it was felt that trust status was the most logical model to realise this vision.

Key challenges and issues

Perhaps the biggest barrier in following the trust school model is that there is no additional funding available. Potentially, five educational institutions are going to be housed in one complex, built without the support of Building Schools for the Future. A costly executive principal has been appointed which will impact on other staffing decisions and two of the schools already have huge budget deficits.
Under trust status the trust becomes the landowner. In this case re-writing a 25 year private financial initiative (PFI ) contract without the local authority as the sole landowner has been very challenging.
There has been a steep learning curve for most members of the federated governing body. In addition to trust matters they have had to familiarise themselves with procedures in two school phases. The impact on work-life balance for headteachers was significant too, with no extra time allocated for the planning work.
When the college headteacher retired he took with him valuable knowledge, having played a significant role in the move toward trust status.

Solution or approach

A federated governing body and a trust Pathfinder working group board was established to assist with the transition into trust status.
The appointment of an executive principal will alleviate some of the administrative burden that has been carried by the existing headteachers.
In preparation for re-structuring, the ‘new build’ concept has been used as a major recruiting tool.
The acting headteacher is marketing the school in order to attract a fair representation of the local community.

Next steps

This is a time of great uncertainty for the leadership teams. The executive principal, new in post at the time of this study, was in the process of sounding out ideas and collecting information and opinions from his staff prior to deciding on a new leadership and management structure.

The schools could remain as separate phases within the trust, or they could merge to become a single entity. This decision has legal implications and is yet to be finalised. Alternatively, the development of a single all-through school could happen in stages. The principal expects that there will be some ‘flattening’ of the leadership structures, but the challenge will be to achieve this across all the schools. Research into alternative models of schooling, in particular all-through schools, will continue.