Topics

Honouring Equality with Evidence

Published December 2020

Catching Up On Our Civic Duty

Published July 2020

The Importance of Ethical Leadership at a Time of National Crisis

Published July 2020

Knowledge-building for School Improvement: Exploring the roles of School Trusts and the School Trust community

In his paper Communities of Improvement: School Trusts as Fields of Practice, Steve Rollett notes that:

Preparing for Change

The last ten years has seen massive reform. We now educate more than half of children and young people in the Trust sector. In 2010, there were just 203...

Building Back with Equity

The past two years have been incredibly challenging for our sector. There is a focus now placed on the gaps in learning for our young people and the mental...

By Steve Rollett and Jon Severs

An Interview with Jon Severs

The education press is a significant actor in our education system. Against a backdrop of speculation about the forthcoming government White Paper, Steve...

Findings from the Edurio Pupil Learning Experience and Wellbeing Survey

At Edurio, we conducted a large-scale survey focusing on issues relating to overall wellbeing, safeguarding and the impact on pupils' happiness at sch...

The Big Answers: Building a New Deal for England's Children

Firstly, I want to acknowledge just how extraordinarily hard this year has been for us - for students, for trainee teachers, for leaders – so thank you...

The Education Recovery Plan

School Trusts have been at the forefront of managing the vast disruption of the pandemic. No one in education is under any illusion that recovery from...

Joining, Merging and Growing Academy Trusts

When Hannah Woodhouse (RSC for the South West) and I joined a CST masterclass on ‘joining, merging and growing’ Academy Trusts, the discussion with...

Access, Engagement, and Connection to Nature and the Implications for Child Wellbeing

Amongst the devastating impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic were several societal shifts that many people are likely interested in maintaining. For some families,...

The Big Ask

This has been a year like no other for children. The sacrifices they have made are enormous, like not seeing friends and family, having to learn remotely,...

Telling the Story of Intelligent Regulation

It was my pleasure to host a panel discussion at CST’s annual conference on the issue of regulation. We were joined by an esteemed group of panellists,...

Using the New Headteachers’ Standards Across a Multi-academy Trust

The brief to the Headteacher Standards Review Group was to develop Headteachers’ Standards for leaders of single schools. The review group, however,...

The Great Education Question of the Day: Catch-up – What is it and What Should we be Doing?

Catch-up. It’s the term on everyone’s lips. Gaps have widened. Commentators and think tanks alike put forward competing superlatives for the scale...

The National Tutoring Programme – An NTP Tuition Provider’s Perspective

Perhaps one of the worst outcomes of the pandemic will be if the hard-won gains made by schools in closing the attainment gap were to be reversed or even...

Honouring Equality with Evidence

As we near the end of this calendar year, I don’t suppose many of us will be too sad to bid 2020 farewell. It’s been a year with many challenges for...

The Future of the Teaching Schools Council and the Potential Impact of Teaching School Hubs

In his 2020 Association of School and College Leaders speech, the Secretary of State for Education set out a significant package of reforms to the teacher...

Reflections on COVID

When the history of this period of education is written, one of the things that will certainly stand out is the response of our school system to an unparalleled...

Providing a Sustained and Flexible Source of Tutoring Support to Schools

Gratitude has been hugely important this year. During lockdown, the Clap for Carers provided a much-needed positive moment every week. NHS rainbows dotted...

‘Rising strong’ – A Pathway to Recovery and Reconnection

Embark Federation is an Education Charitable Trust that serves 3,000 children and their families. Formed in January 2019, it now works with 9 schools,...

Catching Up On Our Civic Duty

We have been talking a lot recently, about the role(s) schools have been playing throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as the role they could – and...

The Importance of Ethical Leadership at a Time of National Crisis

I was both pleased and a bit embarrassed to be recognised in the last edition of Trust as someone that had shown ethical leadership during this time of...

Addressing the Post-Pandemic Widening Disadvantage Gap

The question of how we rebuild our economy, infrastructure and continue to work towards a fair and equitable society following the COVID-19 pandemic must...

Lockdown Learning: Oak’s Lessons for the Future

We often stretch metaphors at our peril. When telling the story of Oak National Academy, I think it’s worth the risk. Often in education we talk about...

The Balance Between Autonomy and Coherence

One of the most important challenges facing any school leader is deciding how best to create working conditions that maximise staff motivation to perform...

Leading with Impact: How Successful Leaders Use Instructional and Transformational Strategies to Make a Difference

"Good leaders change organisations; great leaders change people.” (Hoerr, 2005)

Mapping the Territory for Leaders of School Trusts

In Robert MacFarlane’s ‘Mountain of the Minds’, he tells the story of cartography through the ages. MacFarlane describes how explorers were able...

Maximising Civic Impact

In the last edition of Trust, I wrote about school trusts as an insurgent mission. This is a bold mission, requiring spikiness and limitless horizons....

What’s Behind an Academy Trust’s Decision to Grow?

To put this in some context: academisation is still relatively young. And in this short space of time, those who academised have had to formalise collaboration...

Asking the Right Questions: Being the Chief Learner When It Comes to SEND

One of my favourite phrases in leadership is when the CEO of an organisation brushes away the ‘executive’ part of their job title and replaces it with...

What Does It Take To Lead An Effective MAT?

MATs are still new, complex and evolving in the education sector, which means leaders can often find themselves reacting to what is happening around them;...