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Introduction
In October 2018, we launched the Confederation of School Trusts as the sector body and national organisation representing academy and Multi-academy Trusts in England. At the same time, we published our first edition of Trust – the journal for executive and non-executive leaders of School Trusts.
The last four years have been an astonishing journey as we have built the organisation that is CST – and our Trust Journal has been with us all the way.
In the first ever edition in October 2018, I wrote: "We must put at the heart of our reform journey this simple and powerful moral purpose – that education is a public good.”
My lead article continued:
"We will build a world-leading education system in England if this is at the heart of everything we do as we move irrevocably towards every school in England being part of a strong and sustainable group of schools. This is the end-point – and yes it involves further structural reform but not as an end in itself.
"In the final analysis, it is the power of the group – deep and purposeful collaboration – which will drive sustained improvements and build a world-leading education system.”
Four years on, we still believe this at CST. We now have two thirds of all academy school in membership, and we continue to grow every day.
Between now and then, we have suffered a major global crisis in the form of the Covid-19 pandemic. In April 2020 (one month into the pandemic), I talked about the tenacity of the human spirit. What we know from periods of global stress is that the human spirit prevails. Covid-19 has been a global historical event, and one of the things that has marked our response is the ways in which the human spirit prevails, the many stories of kindness, love and hope that were everywhere during this dark and difficult time in our history.
As the lock down restrictions started to ease in March 2021, we made the case for unprecedented collaboration and new forms of leadership. As Peter Senge points out, the deep changes necessary to accelerate progress require leaders who catalyse collective leadership.
We said that we can and should catalyse leadership within our own organisations – our Trusts. But, there are a host of systemic challenges beyond the reach of existing institutions and their hierarchical leadership structures or plans for growth.
We require unprecedented collaboration among Trusts and Trust leaders to foster collective leadership to build local systems, focusing on the value of the child and the quality of education.
In July 2022, following our first in-person annual conference, I reflected on the years of the pandemic through the lens of Professor Hennessey’s wonderful book, A Duty of Care. This book argues that what defined us in the post-war period was our sense of a duty of care. This was the basis of the great reforms outlined in the Beveridge Report of 1942 which in turn resulted in the great pillars of the Welfare State.
We have rediscovered an intense duty of care through the pandemic. Hennessey refers to the Covid-19 enquiry and suggests that their report should be called: "‘It took a Virus…’ for this is what stimulated us collectively to sharpen and extend our sense of a duty of care for the vulnerable and those who are on the margins of society.”
Hennessy says:"The great question of UK politics … is whether we can find the pessimism-breaking policies, the people, the purpose, the language, and the optimism to shift [our current] system and replace it with something much closer to who we are and, above all, who we can be.”
But we do not need to wait for this political settlement – it is within our gift to find the people, the purpose, the language, and the optimism to shift our mental models, to see education as the building of who we can be.
If we are to achieve this, it will require us to invest in the hard work of consensus building, focusing less on what it is that makes us different and on issues that can divide us.
This brings us to the present. CST has always been an agile organisation. When we pivoted the organisation to focus entirely on our members during the pandemic, this was an agile decision. When we refocused all our support and development to virtual environments – alongside schools who were facing the same challenges with educating pupils virtually – this was an agile decision. When we started to execute our knowledge-building work through the establishment of our professional communities, this was an agile decision.
And now we feel it is the right time to move towards greater agility in the writing and thought leadership we bring to you. So, this will be the last edition of the journal as we migrate towards the more agile platform of our blog which allows us to publish in real time rather than through half-termly editions.
But what has not changed and will never change, is our commitment to you. To advocating for you, connecting you to each other and supporting you. Because we believe that we are stronger together.
So I’ll finish this last article for Trust where my annual conference speech finished: Let us exercise our sovereignty as institutions but bind together in a common purpose. Let us build strong educational institutions that address the inequalities and hardships we face as a society and as a nation. But let those institutions work together in a single moral purpose – to educate for public benefit – and to create social value for wider common good.
