Our guest blog today is from Dan Morrow, CEO at Dartmoor MAT. Dan has worked as a Senior Leader in education for 15 years, in both Primary and Secondary settings, as well as acting as a trustee for a number of other charitable organisations and third-sector bodies. He is currently completing an MBA to facilitate a strategic focus on national policy and he advises widely at the Department of Education. Dan recognises the most valuable and valued resource under his leadership – his staff.

It’s really important that we take flexible working in the education sector seriously. We need to accept that for graduates coming into the profession, teaching and working in education is less attractive than it used to be. Comparably, other sectors are able to offer far more flexibility and agility. School recruitment to both primary and secondary hasn’t hit targets this year, and didn’t hit targets last year. We’re in a continual churn of not having enough people entering the profession and far too many leaving. 

So I’m always in favour of looking at how this can work. How do we ensure that we give that flexibility to our colleagues without decreasing the experience of our young people and therefore going against our core mission? That’s an issue to solve rather than a problem to be had.

You’ll often hear the timetabler say that flexible working is difficult. The answer to that is, yes, it is. However, it’s still worth the time and investment. And the phrase I use quite often on this is ‘the tail can’t wag the dog’. The timetable is there to efficiently enact your teaching curriculum model and your expectations. They can’t come at the cost of the flexibility we must put in place.

Why is flexible working important for teachers?

Flexibility is particularly important for female colleagues in this space, to ensure that their lives aren’t a choice between parenthood and career. It isn’t an expectation that if you’re not in for all five days, your contribution is valued less. In an increasingly agile workforce across all sectors, if we try to maintain some of the paradigms we’ve always had on this, then that’s where we make it a less attractive proposition. And so if we know that female colleagues in their thirties in particular are the most likely to leave a profession, then this tells us something about our approach as a profession. 

Furthermore, our responsibility is to ensure that if someone does take advantage of flexible working, that if they are working three days, they work three days. We’ve got to be really conscious of when we put our meeting times. What are the opportunities to contribute to communication in a way that doesn’t disenfranchise? What I don’t want to do is create a circumstance in which any colleague feels like they’re not doing anything to their best and it becomes an overwhelm. There’s some cultural aspects that are wider than any school or trust, frankly, that we need to be thinking about.

How do we make flexible working succeed in the timetable?

We’ve been training our timetablers in order to get more flexible. In fact, when we brought Arbor into the trust, that was one of the core aspects that I asked for. How can we be supported to make sure that actually, this isn’t a new timetable system, this is a new timetable approach? Even in language, we’ve adapted how we’re talking. Often a timetabler will talk about flexible staff as a constraint. And the reason it’s a constraint is because, well, they want to work Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, which means? Which means? Which means it’s not a constraint, it’s a condition, and therefore it’s a condition and expectation of employment. So it doesn’t constrain the timetable, it merely gives some parameters in which we need to meet those conditions without taking away from a balance for our young people to experience. You don’t want a child to have five periods of Maths in one day, for example. However, that really rarely happens.  

I say this as a timetabler myself, we can be a tad precious in this space and we almost treat it as if it is an aspect removed from the humans actually involved in it. A timetable is an organisation of human labour and endeavour. It isn’t just a set of pretty colours with some initials on it, which therefore takes us away from what we’re trying to achieve. What we’re trying to achieve is delivering a balanced and rich curriculum that meets the needs of the adults delivering it. And that second part is a really critical aspect of how we reframe discussion.

Flexible working pinchpoints

Of course, flexible working isn’t without its pinchpoints. One classic example is that in one of the secondaries on Fridays, there are significantly less adults in the building. That provides a challenge to us as leaders to solve. That shouldn’t be the responsibility of our colleagues who are making really valid requests. It’s about being more flexible about how we treat that day. In particular, what do we do in terms of looking at the senior leader timetables, what do we do at looking at our support staff and their ability to support more broadly? How do we look at duties? How do we look at other aspects of an ecosystem that ensure that we don’t take away?

Many of our staff who are on a 0.8 fraction will tend to go for a Friday or a Monday as the day they’re off, because it gives them a greater ability to basically do what they wish to do. One school of thought is: that’s really difficult because that means I’ve barely got anyone in on a Friday. Another school of thought is: I’ve got a really exceptional teacher for four days of a week and I have an issue to process and I have an issue to solve. I’m not going to make it their issue. There can be a bit of guilting or emotional blackmail in this space for female colleagues in particular. And since there’s already that really strong sense of responsibility versus balance, I just think that it’s not just inappropriate. It goes against wellbeing and it goes against what we should be trying to achieve for all of our staff, which is that they can be their best selves and do their best work.

Secondly, there is something to be said for how we can put some flexibility into the days that staff have. So, for example, for those where it’s not about flexible working, that is being on a 0.8, 0.6 or a different FTE, because I have looked at this, it could be really quite easy to rotate so that in one half term you do get the Friday, the next half term you get a Wednesday. There’s space for agility there. 

Innovating thinking around the timetable

In our primary schools, our young people have a very agile and flexible experience of when curriculum is delivered. Suddenly in secondary, you set a timetable for September and then schools are fairly set in this belief that it can’t change or move, because it would be too complicated. That’s utter nonsense. It’s just the way it’s always been. 

At Dartmoor, we’re starting to see timetabling as a group endeavour. So instead of it being one person sitting in a room in the dark, getting headaches, trying to make it all work, it’s actually six to eight people sitting around a table, collectively solving, challenging each other and starting to think, well, could this work? How could it work? What will this look like in practice? Timetabling really is the biggest aspect that will affect the lived experience of our children and our adults. It’s therefore the most important proceduralisation of strategy we have.

In any school, we don’t ever allow single points of failure where one person is responsible for just one really specific aspect. And yet, when it comes to timetable, we do. We talk about the timetabler. Well, how about the Timetable Team? One of the things we’ve done around timetabling is put in a playbook. The first thing it starts with is, what are our cultural norms? What are we trying to achieve? It’s really important that middle leaders and senior leaders and class teachers and support staff are really involved in the process of timetable. That way, we don’t get to a point where we just say, here’s the timetable and that’s that. 

Championing flexible working in education

In sum, flexible working in schools is not something that we can, or should, shy away from. In fact, there’s no reason whatsoever that we as a sector can’t lead the way in this. We are one of the most female dominated professions there is. We should be the ones holding up a way of doing this which is perhaps more innovative, more inclusive and more radical, dare I say, than we have in the past.

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What does a good policy look like? 

In thinking about policies, procedures and processes, success looks like meeting our charitable objectives as an academy trust. It goes without saying that everything we do should be furthering education and fulfilling our mission. However, we also subscribe very heavily to the work that the CST has done around civic trust and civic leadership. What that boils down to is that everyone within your organisation – the children, the families, our colleagues – get a sense of fulfilment, purpose, and a sense of joy. In challenging times around recruitment and retention, one of the core levers we have is to ensure that everyone feels deeply connected to their work. At Dartmoor, we start to do this by making sure that we ‘work with’, we don’t ‘do to’, in order to ensure both collegiality and alignment. We make an intentional effort to listen to all of the equally important voices in the organisation, which in turn makes our policies not only more well-known and understood, but more effective. 

A lot of what we have in place is intentional by design – they don’t just happen by accident. If we’re thinking about which processes are important to design first, I think it’s vital that the processes around finance, people, estates, and, increasingly in the last few years, digital are clarified. But again, there should always be a sense of co-construction. 

Finance, for example, in a MAT, is often a function that feels ‘done to’. People are told what they need to do to be compliant, and that’s that. I don’t like that in education, there’s schools or trusts and then there’s the support services – this makes for a separation. Trusts can be very legalistic in the way they set direction and goals, without making policies accessible for those actually using them. Our processes are codified in handbooks, formed through staff voices and working parties where we’re constantly checking in on whether they’re helpful, if they make sense, does it give staff what they need to reduce bureaucratic burden, do they feel they’re able to quickly, effectively and efficiently understand how to do x, y and z? 

If you designed a new process for, let’s say, budget management, how do you actually practically roll that out? How do you communicate that? 

Step one: create a draft playbook (this will tend to be done by the teams who are responsible)

Step two: market-test the draft with groups of colleagues, asking them to review and critique

Inclusion of our staff at this level means our policies are far more easily realised and enacted. More broadly, it really helps us to make sure we’re solving the right issues, because sometimes it’s quite easy to sit and put a process in place because we’ve looking at it from a compliance mindset. 

Compliance vs culture

Compliance is really important because it’s foundational, but it can’t be seen as a separate strand from the culture and what we’re trying to promote in terms of that collegiality, that cooperation, and as I said, that sense of ‘doing with’ not ‘doing to’. The temptation when it comes to policies, processes and procedures is to always think about the 1%, that really sharp end of risk, and ignore the 99% aspect of how we need to be setting out our cultural norms, how it needs to be linked to our vision and values, and ultimately, how policies shouldn’t just be something that you go to when you need to enact them. It should be an absolute statement of both intent and a statement of our vision and values translated into important statements.

It’s important to acknowledge that this isn’t something we’ve perfected in our trust, yet. Even with the approaches I’ve mentioned so far, there can still be a bit of a disconnect between the policy as what’s seen as a legal document versus what we actually want it to be. And that’s because it has represented a step change. Especially for very experienced colleagues, their understanding of a policy is, here’s something I go to if I’m not happy or I’m in trouble or something’s coming up. There’s a change curve there that just takes a bit more embedding and reiteration.

Implementing policies in our schools 

When it comes to people policies, the vast majority in our trust, are set at that central level. This is important for two reasons. From a compliance point of view, we have to remember we are one employer and therefore, actually, terms and conditions need to be equitable. From a cultural point of view, it’s important to ensure in our policies that we are able to promote what we want. And that’s why we’ve done such a lot of work on the flexible working policy, the menopause policy and others. It’s about being progressive so that these policies are about rights, not permissions. In terms of at school level, there’s always going to be headteacher discretion for the application of policy. It’s a roadmap, it’s not a straightjacket.

A good example would be our bereavement policy, for example. When I was younger my nan died. She was a really, really important part of my life. And actually that was something where I needed some flexibility because it affected me really quite deeply. You can’t capture that all in a policy, because you need to effectively standardise some aspects, but you can do that in your processes and procedures of being able to sit someone down and say, are you okay? What support do you need, how long do you need and what can we do to be there for you? It would be impossible to write down a policy that would encapsulate how everybody reacts in grief.

Making an effective policy 

Ultimately, it should all come back to your vision and values. As Mary Meyer would say, vision and values should be lived, not laminated. A policy is a statement of how we live our values, how we live our entitlement, and how we forefront the employee experience in the way we do business.

I think the second thing that’s really important is the stakeholder engagement. Again, it’s really important that you don’t just send your policies to the union so they can sign off on it, but you actually ask questions with the intent of changing the policy where needed. Have you seen best practice? Can you help us to form this? Because they are incredibly knowledgeable in this space and really do want to work with schools and trusts to have the very best experience for their members and colleagues.

And more broadly, once you’ve formed your initial statements around policy, bringing that into a space where stakeholders get to contribute is critical. It’s no different than when we’re teaching. We don’t give resources to our young people that they’re not able to access because that would be ludicrous. So why would we, in our policies and the way we state things, just lean into a legalistic framework as opposed to enactments?

And then the third thing, which is something that we’ve only started recently, and it kind of feels like a no-brainer, is that we’ve started to do a review with stakeholders of a policy six months after implementation. It’s important to do that because we all on our policy say this will be reviewed in two years time, three years time. Why wait?

The post “Lived, not laminated” – How Dartmoor MAT implements policies, processes and procedures appeared first on Arbor.

Brilliant individually, MAT MIS, School MIS and Data Warehouse from Arbor work even better together – giving your trust one, joined-up mission control. Give your schools the tools they need to manage their day-to-day, give your central team the ability to drive efficiency and standardise workflows, and empower your leaders to make data-informed decisions as your trust grows.

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What does this mean for trusts?

With Arbor as the operating system for your trust, you’ll get centralised functionality, actionable data, and customisable data warehouse views. Our goal is to give you all your data and action-taking in one place, reducing time and complexity for your teams.

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Our MAT MIS packages just got even better

We have listened to your feedback and added even more features to our MAT packages to make sure your central teams have the tools they need. All of our MAT MIS packages work seamlessly with Arbor MIS and have been designed to flex as your trust matures and you need additional functionality.

MAT MIS Essentials: An extra pair of hands for your team

Our starter tier gives you a central, easy-to-use home for all your schools’ data. Get rid of your spreadsheets, and say goodbye to individual logins for every MIS in your trust. Essentials starts to take manual workarounds and reporting off you at last – perfect for small teams

MAT MIS Plus: Centralise work, policies and data views

Our Plus tier gives you a full, central MIS for your Trust team. Get market-leading tools to align and manage your trust – from defining policies at a central level, to centralised comms, and a built-in BI Connector

MAT MIS Enterprise: All your trust’s data in one place, in your own data warehouse

Our brand new Enterprise tier gives trusts an out-of-the-box data warehouse for the first time. Reduce your system complexity and data-collection headaches by bringing all your datasets together in your own Data Warehouse, managed by Arbor. Analyse, spot trends and make strategic data-driven decisions in a whole new way

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The possibilities with Arbor’s MAT MIS

• No more travelling from school to school to support them with their MIS queries. Login remotely via MAT MIS to each of your schools’ MIS. Use Arbor’s audit tools to see across all your schools and support them remotely, saving time and resources.
• No more having someone in each of your schools do the same task as each other. Use Arbor’s features to redefine your processes and increase efficiency across your MAT. Centralising your processes and tasks means you can share people resources across your schools, reducing cost and increasing consistency.
• No more spending hours and hours and £100,000’s on building your own Data Warehouse from scratch. Use Arbor’s Custom Data Warehouse to load your data into our managed infrastructure, letting you report on data from all your sources in one place, giving a holistic view of your trust and the stories your data is telling you.
  

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“In terms of what we can do at a trust level, having MAT MIS has been game-changing. I couldn’t do my job without it. It’s the fact there is an aggregated view of all your staff and students in one place online.” Rob Wall, Data and MIS Lead at Danes Educational Trust

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We’re excited to launch the next evolution of MAT MIS, and hope it’s a real game changer when it comes to managing your trust and collaborating with your schools.
If you don’t yet use Arbor, we’d love to speak to you: email hello@arbor-education.com and one of our lovely team will be in contact.

Already using our MIS and want to get started? You can do so by reading our Help Centre articles or speak to your Account Manager.

We look forward to hearing your feedback.

The post The next evolution of MAT MIS appeared first on Arbor.

While the government gave an additional 2.3 billion to schools in England for each of the next two years (in Dec 2022), the extra funding takes spending in 2024 back to the same level as in 2010. It follows real-term cuts of 9% per pupil between 2009 and 2019, the steepest reduction in more than 40 years.

And while the share of total spending on education has been falling, the proportion of the UK population in full-time education has risen from 18% in the early 1980s to an all-time high of 20% during the 2000s, where it remains today. This is undoubtedly an incredibly tough climate for schools to operate in.

With that in mind, we’ve brought together the expertise of three trust leaders on how they’re approaching the cost-of-living crisis.

In our trust, we have a lot of families who we would refer to as just about managing. As is typical in a faith MAT, a lot of the families are not eligible for Free School Meals, they’re not eligible for Pupil Premium, but they are living really close to the edge, so it’s making sure that those families are supported.

I know the government is very keen on economies of scale. Our focus is on actual school improvement, making sure our schools are excellent and that there are development opportunities for our staff, so that we become an attractive employer through training, through developing our own teachers. This means looking into offering teacher training programmes and apprenticeships for our support staff, for the staff on fractionalised hours, term time only. We want to work with our schools to talk about innovative approaches like annualised hours. TAs may only be earning 13,000 or 14,000 pounds a year with little opportunity to do work in the time when they’re not employed. So looking at whether they can work a longer week but earn a full time salary so that their salary is more liveable. So there’s loads of strands that are going on in terms of how we manage budget pressures.

We’re fortunate in that our schools have all had good reserves and we have managed to maintain those reserves and increase them over the past two years. What we’re now looking to do is use some of those reserves to do things like employ therapeutic staff or specialist staff, partly to support those pupils, but also to make sure we can lever as much funding from local authorities as we should be getting.

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In terms of taking a sector wide view, we’ve seen real term per pupil cuts over the decade. And I think what’s made that worse is, as well as actual school funding being cut, we’ve seen a 20% cut in real terms per child in wider children’s services. I fully 100% support the idea that in the public sector we should be looking at every single pound that we spend, but this idea of doing more with less is fairytale. You wouldn’t go to a supermarket and ask to pay less for the same amount of goods as the previous week.

In schools, two thirds of spending goes on teachers and support staff. So if you’re looking at doing more wiht less, essentially you’re saying that your teachers and support staff have to work harder, faster, longer. And is that really what we want for one of the most imporant parts of the public sector? I don’t think so. Theres going to come a point where, and many would argue that we’re there already, there’s literally no fat to get rid of.

And we’re also operating within a context where teacher retention, or lack of it, is at a critical point as well – ultimately as a result of pay and workload. At the Education Policy Institute, we believe two things should be looked at further: differentiated pay and flexible working. It feels to me that there are some easy wins there, when operating in such a challenging context.

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At our trust, we’ve seen a significant increase in those who are able to claim free school meals. The funding for PPG will not come through until later, so there will be a lag. As a result, we’re focused on making sure our planning is on a one, two and three year basis. In terms of our staff, we operate and signpost a number of food banks across the trust and we’re seeing in a trust of 900 staff, 6% of our staff are accessing food banks.

Of course, we focus on our pupils, but our own staff are suffering from a cost of living crisis that plays out strategically in recruitment and retention issues. But it also plays out in a rural trust such as mine – a member of staff recently told me that the cost of fuel is a barrier to coming into work. That’s just one of the things that we are facing in our wider ecosystem that we possibly haven’t come across in decades. There needs to be a reconceptualisation, therefore, of our role in being there to safeguard and support our staff across the trust.

We’re also looking at what we’re able to do with the third sector. I think in our country, what is incredible is the amount of work that goes on in the charity space and first sector space. What is sometimes less effective is bringing that together into a real network so that everyone makes sure that we understand where the gaps and overlaps of provision are. So truthfully, I think as a multi academy trust, where we find ourselves in a budget position, this isn’t about us stepping into a breach financially because we’re just trying to pay our own bills. We need to better direct some of that focus in terms of strategic planning and look at it through the lens of what our pupils need, what our staff need, and how we engage in a wider community space.

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This article is an excerpt from a panel at ArborFest, Arbor’s annual conference where we bring our community of schools and trusts together. Find out more about ArborFest here. 

Want to see how your MIS could save your trust money and time? Our recent report takes a look at the return on investment that schools and trusts can get from Arbor. Download it for free here. 

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The post Three leaders share how their trusts are saving money during the cost-of-living crisis appeared first on Arbor.

The trust decided to move all of their schools to Arbor MIS and started onboarding in summer 2022. They started using MAT MIS for their Central Team at the same time, making it easier and quicker to work with their schools as one organisation, not many.

Growth at DCAT

Stephen Barrett-Kinsley, COO at DCAT, says that growth is at the heart of the trust’s vision for 2025 and wider strategy, and they are constantly thinking about how to achieve this sustainably without compromising value for their existing schools.

DCAT currently has schools in East Sussex, West Sussex, Bournemouth, Hampshire and the Isle of Wight. Stephen says that “one of the interesting challenges we have is creating that sense of connectivity and family for what is a remarkably geographically spread group of schools.”

As they expand to 25 schools, it’s increasingly important to be “match-fit” for growth. For DCAT, Stephen describes being match-fit as having a good handle on the trust’s data: “With our old systems, it would have been impossible to intimately know the data or information of 25 schools. Our focus now is on changing the back-end software, systems and processes so that it enables seamless transfer of information and data.”

Implementing Arbor across the trust

In 2021, the trust decided to choose a single MIS for all their schools – at the time, three schools were already using Arbor. There were four key things that DCAT wanted from an MIS:

The Central Team felt that Arbor met all of these requirements and also liked that the system is always being updated with new features: “You can demonstrably see a consistent effort to improve.”

When new schools join DCAT, they need to switch to Arbor within their first term. Although the trust isn’t prescriptive when it comes to most software, Stephen highlighted how important it was that all schools in their trust use the same MIS; it means that they can connect with other key trust systems including finance, payroll, safeguarding and assessment. Without joining up these systems, DCAT says that it’s difficult to “integrate [schools] properly into how we’re operating as a trust.”

Choosing a centralised MIS

Another benefit of using Arbor across the trust is ease of reporting. Before moving to Arbor, DCAT’s schools shared data with the Central Team via spreadsheets each term. As well as being a time-consuming process, it left room for human error and inconsistent reporting.

As DCAT grew, it became more important to have “seamless transfer of data, seamless access to data.” With their schools using Arbor MIS, it was a natural choice to use Arbor’s MAT MIS to make reporting more efficient and effective for schools and the Central Team. Data from each school feeds automatically and instantaneously into MAT MIS so that the trust can support their schools in real time, rather than waiting for termly reports.

Stephen recalls introducing Senior Leaders to MAT MIS and showing them, for example, how to see attendance at all their schools in one click. He says: “it was genuinely a life-changing moment” for staff who were used to legacy systems and lengthy workarounds.

Benefits of Arbor for a growing trust

Arbor helps DCAT to work together as one organisation as they grow. Despite the distance between schools, standardised reporting helps DCAT to be consistent with how they treat their schools. MAT MIS also gives DCAT the insight to be able to create links between schools with similar demographics. For example, they noticed that two schools had high numbers of looked-after children and were able to make the connection between them so they could share best practices.

DCAT makes the most of using MAT MIS both to drill down into individual school data and look at broader trends. In particular, Stephen feels “the quick dashboards are just exceptionally useful. And being able to quickly drill down into a school’s data by clicking a few buttons.” If they want to find out more, staff “have the ability to log into a school’s MIS so that we can just quickly jump in and find out what’s happening.” A recent example is that a review of staff absence highlighted, on closer inspection, inconsistencies in the use of attendance codes. The trust was able to turn this into a training exercise to support office staff in recording attendance consistently.

Quick access to data is key when working across a growing organisation. Senior Education Leaders regularly meet to review data from across the trust and talk about the best way to improve school performance. They no longer have to wait for information from the school as they can access and analyse data before meeting with the Headteachers. This means that the time they have with them is much more productive and focussed on improvement. What’s more, comparisons can be drawn across schools and connections made to share ideas.

A particular focus at DCAT is attendance and they find it very useful to draw comparisons and set benchmarks for their schools so that they know where to focus. “We can quickly access that data seamlessly, have the conversation, create the links and move forward.”

The post Why Arbor’s MAT MIS is critical to DCAT’s growth strategy appeared first on Arbor.

We all know the Heraclitus phrase that ‘the only constant in life is change,’ and yet change is also the thing we fear and put off until necessary. The world of education has sometimes been slow to pick up on the great and sweeping changes that we’ve seen in the rest of the public sector, particularly when it comes to embracing cloud technology. The reasons for this are understandable: budgets are tight, retention is challenging, and the landscape seems to be constantly shifting. 2022 seemed to epitomise this landscape of change, both politically and also in the sheer numbers of schools who moved to the cloud: in one term alone nearly 1,500 schools alone moved away from legacy software. 

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Why is communication so important to change management?

Day-to-day, I speak to many MATs who are thinking about moving to the cloud and trying to align their systems, particularly as they look to grow. And what I’ve found is, whether I’m speaking to a newly formed MAT who doesn’t really know why they’re moving to the cloud, or a long-standing MAT with tens of schools, the common pitfalls remain the same, meaning trusts are setting themselves up for a far more challenging journey into cloud-based life than it ought to be. 

It all comes down to change management and communication. In Lewin’s original change management model from the 1940s, communication sits as one of the steps in the first phase – long before any kind of implementation or decision-making. Skipping this step is hazardous, but it’s something I see time and time again. From the second your team starts to think about change, be this of an MIS or something entirely different, it needs to be communicated to all those it affects. It needs to be communicated why you are thinking about change, what the impetus was, what benefits you’re aiming for and what the long-term goal is. It’s also worth mentioning that this communication piece doesn’t sit within a single email; it should be an invitation for others to be involved in the conversation. 

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Where to start?

I’d always recommend starting with a document which clearly defines: what is being changed, who it is going to affect short-term (decision-makers), and who it will affect long-term. I’d also recommend putting together a working party, who are consulted throughout the entire process. Said working party shouldn’t just include directors and the CEO, but should be representative of stakeholders, including a headteacher, perhaps teachers or office managers. 

The misconception made here is that communicating a decision is a tickbox exercise of letting those who will be affected, know about the change. Instead, it should be formative and beneficial to the decision-making process itself. The working party should be a broad spectrum of what your trust is all about so that you get different viewpoints and skillsets feeding into the conversation. And, the likelihood is, if you turn to those invested in the ‘old way’, and say, we’re thinking of moving forward with something new, people will come out of the woodwork with crucial expertise on what it is they need to do their jobs well. 

What I see far too often are well-meaning and well-researched project leads, who have spanned the entire procurement process, done their research and likely chosen the best system for their trust. And yet, there’s an assumption that all those other stakeholders will automatically reach the same conclusion without the months of context. Instead, it feels like a decision has been made and isn’t to be questioned. Those stakeholders are still at the beginning of the journey, meaning that whilst the project lead is trying to implement the project, they’re simultaneously having to justify and reconvince the trust that this was the right move. Of course, this means implementation itself suffers, training lacks buy-in, and engagement/uptake is low, meaning that even if the system were the perfect fit, nobody is bought in enough to realise the benefits. Day one of the new system becomes a rush to make up for the lack of previous dialogue. 

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Managing change with growth

With growth leading as the goal for many trusts, strategic management of such changes becomes increasingly important. It goes without saying that those schools who are yet to academise are increasingly the most reluctant to do so, with a loss of autonomy most often quoted as the biggest reasoning. If MATs are set on growing and retaining schools, in a gradually more competitive landscape, they must caveat these fears with clear communication and an openness of conversation, regardless of whatever change they are making. 

The other side of change and moving systems, for example, is not so much managing expectations as to creating expectations. Speaking strictly to MIS, it’s interesting that most trusts (though this will change), have never had to move before and have always used the same system. As a result, the question is often: this is how we did it before, how do we achieve the same thing, but in the cloud? The question should be: how can we do this better, with the support of cloud systems? 

‘Cloud’ has been a buzzword for a while; there’s an idea that schools and trusts need to simply shift everything they currently do into the cloud. I would ask those that still buy into this philosophy why they want to directly replicate something which they are actively moving away from? Instead, why not acknowledge you want change and pick strategic tools that can make a measurable difference to the way your organisation runs? Improve your workflows, improve your processes, let the technology be part of your culture and vision rather than a tickbox, consider how it can be part of your school improvement plan, think how you could reduce workload or boost wellbeing. A change of this kind should be exactly that… a change. 

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Closing thoughts

What it all comes back to is that initial impetus to change, when the decision is made to think about something new. That’s when the real change starts to happen, and in order for it to be successful, central teams must have their change management and communication piece secure from the beginning, so that everybody knows exactly where you are going, why you’re going there, and how it’s going to transform the way you work for the better. 

Since we started with a quote, it seems like a good idea to end on one too, this time from author and thought leader Lisa Bodell:

“”Change cannot be put on people. The best way to instill change is to do it with them. Create it with them.”

Matt’s article appears in our free ebook for MAT leaders, all about creating a cohesive trust, which you can download here. 

Or, discover more of our content for MATs here.

The post Perfecting the art of change management at your school or trust appeared first on Arbor.

The Confederation of School Trusts (CST) is the national organisation and sector body for school trusts in England advocating for, connecting and supporting executive and governance leaders.

The new partnership is part of the Confederation’s Platinum Partner scheme, which brings together leading companies within the industry and CST’s members, who together are responsible for the education of more than three million young people.

Arbor chief executive James Weatherill said: “We’re thrilled to be announcing our partnership with the Confederation of Schools Trusts today.

“At Arbor, our mission is to transform the way schools and trusts work. We’re delighted to partner with an organisation committed to doing the same, and are looking forward to working on projects and events together which show our commitment to working with trust leaders on improving operational, data and growth challenges and helping them to operate as one trust, not multiple schools.

“We’re looking forward to supporting our customers through the CST network, and to meeting other trust leaders interested in the ways that Arbor can help as you scale your data and operations.”

We will be working on exciting projects and events with CST in the months to come, so watch this space!

The post Arbor becomes latest CST Platinum Partner appeared first on Arbor.

In March 2022, the government released the schools white paper, which revealed plans for all schools to be part of “strong” multi-academy trusts (MATs) by 2030. Recent political change means the bill has now taken a back seat, but with many MATs already intending to grow, the scene has been set for a critical few years in the academisation journey. 

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Academisation: where do schools and multi-academy trusts currently stand?

With many trusts now set on growth, we wanted to explore if the expectations of MAT leaders aligned with the sentiment of LA maintained schools. 

In September 2022, we surveyed 108 trust leaders and 244 members of SLT in LA maintained schools from around the country. 

We found that less than half of all LA Maintained schools expected to be part of a MAT by 2030. Many cited political uncertainty, though the majority of respondents said their negative feelings towards academisation were focused on loss of autonomy, community and identity. Schools also quoted their lack of need for support, especially when they were already ”‘economically viable and have good results.” Those that do expect to join a MAT were still largely negative about the prospect, with many simply saying “we have no choice.”

Despite this response from schools, not one respondent in our survey of MAT leaders thought that their trust would add zero schools in the next three years. Most respondents expected to grow by either 4-6 schools (33%), 7-10 schools (22%) or 1-3 schools (22%). 2% of respondents expected to grow by over 31 schools. This was matched by the general consensus that “schools joining is always positive”, with many participants referring to how growth would allow their trust to “make a difference to as many lives as possible.”

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Bridging the expectations gap between schools and multi-academy trusts

The discrepancy between the way schools and trust leaders view academisation is clear. With the majority (59%) of respondents in our survey of MAT leaders saying that their preferred method of growth was through acquiring new schools, there is work to be done on changing the perception of what joining a MAT can truly mean. This is especially pertinent for MATs who want to make sure they grow as a cohesive trust with a strong culture, rather than taking on schools simply to remain financially viable. 

Political uncertainty aside, how can MAT leaders win over schools who are reluctant to academise? And, as trusts grow, how can they make sure that they do so sustainably and as one organisation, not many? 

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How to grow your multi-academy trust as one organisation, not many

We’ve put together an ebook for MAT leaders, where we hope you will find some answers to these questions. It features the thoughts of six MAT leaders and experts on growth:

• Introduction from Arbor’s CRO, Phillippa De’Ath
• Insights from Mark Greatrex, CEO at Bellevue Place Education Trust, on why fluidity and mergers are central to the future MAT landscape
• Danny Armitage, Executive Director at Together Learning Trust explores whether you can be a strong trust without a distinctive culture
• Hazel Pulley, CEO at Excelsior MAT, looks into the opportunities that come with growth for trusts and schools alike
• A guide to change management at your MAT from Matt Darsley, Arbor’s Senior Partnership Manager
• Top tips on how to create a strong digital strategy as your trust grows, from Lisa Hawker, CIO at TransforMATive
• How and why do MATs need to scale their central teams? Dave Noble, Director at NSBL Associates, provides his answers to this big question.

We’ve also put together some of the comments and perspectives from the respondents of both of our surveys.

Download your free copy here!

We’d love to see where you stand in this discussion – join the debate on social media using the hashtag #CohesiveMATs. 

Discover more of our content for multi-academy trusts here. 

The post Multi-academy trust growth strategy: How to scale as one organisation appeared first on Arbor.

I’ve always believed in leading with a strong moral purpose, supported by the idea of servant leadership. The simple values that we learn in everyday life, like treating others how you like to be treated, are ones that should be brought into your organisation. 

And I take that with me when thinking about culture. Whether it be in a classroom, a corridor or on the playground, I’m always thinking, would I be happy for my child to be involved in an interaction like that? Once you start viewing things through this lens, you can be guided by your moral purpose. 

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Taking on vulnerable schools

A great deal of our work as a trust has been around schools in special measures. When I get asked why I focus on vulnerable schools, I often reply, ‘Why not?’ It’s who we are and what we do. Many teachers get into the profession to make a difference, and I’m no exception. Certainly in the early years, it wasn’t even a consideration to turn down a school who would ask for help. You learn along the way about pinch points within your own organisation and the risk, then, that comes with this approach. Over time, you find the balance of helping others without negatively impacting what you’ve already established. However, I certainly don’t think trusts should have a blanket approach of not taking on vulnerable schools. It’s got to be an informed choice.

It’s also key to acknowledge when thinking about this choice, that taking on a vulnerable school can be brutal, both physically and emotionally. You have to unearth the challenges which have led that school to where it currently stands, which can mean uprooting safeguarding policies and having to look face-on at the harm that the previous ineffectiveness of the policy may have caused to children. That’s difficult, even when you know you are there to fix it. At the same time, there will be people who aren’t yet onboard with their school joining the trust, which can lead to further difficult conversations. Not to mention that trusts aren’t  awash with extra capacity given the challenges of funding over the last ten years. You’ve got to have a really good process for identifying what that capacity is going to be, so that you can get that transfer of resource right.

That’s why due diligence is absolutely essential. You need to make sure that the infrastructure is there, so that teachers are able to get on with their job. You can’t have out-of-date servers or significant HR issues – you need to set up the conditions for them to succeed first. Often, people are drawn immediately to focus on the quality of education, particularly in schools that Ofsted would define as ‘failing’, though I’m never comfortable with the term ‘failing school’. That’s undoubtedly important, but you have to get the infrastructure of the school right first. HR, finance, safeguarding… all of those structural things that enable you to focus on education. If you don’t fix those, they’ll keep coming back and knocking you off course. In that sense, the due diligence in those areas is far more important than what’s going on in the classroom. 

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Aligning your MAT’s culture

When it comes to changing the culture, the way I like to think of it is that we are all there for the same ‘why’, as dubbed by Simon Sinek. What people begin to understand is the reason they’re in the school is exactly the same as yours – to provide the best possible education for the students in that school. It’s important to communicate that, especially when talking to those who have been through the emotional toll of going into special measures. This way, you can be sure that, whatever comes next, your moral purpose and values are aligned. The next step is convincing them that they’re part of the solution, and not part of the problem. For a long time, staff would have been told they’re part of the problem. Their understanding of the weight of responsibility they take is disproportionate to the impact they’ve had. Often they’re the people who have tried everything to help that school, but the conditions haven’t been there for them to have the impact they want to have. 

When we take on a new school, we do this by getting everybody together. Every single member of staff, be that the caretaker, office manager, through to the head, comes together so we tell them exactly why we’re there. More importantly, we show that we’re there to listen and to stay for the long-term. It’s an open-door policy. We’ve done it quite formally too, where in some cases I’ve met with every single member of staff individually. I would ask them what they feel are the problems and what they think is to come, unpicking how they feel about their situation. That’s really good intelligence to unlock. 

The same goes for parents, as creating that external culture is important too, especially where they’ve lost confidence in the school. If parents are angry or uncertain, the answer is also an open-door policy – let’s get them into the school and allow them to get it all off their chest. Let’s convince them that we’re in this together. 

What it comes back to is that acid test of, would this be good enough for my own child? That’s the ultimate measure of success, in my opinion. It’s an indescribable feeling when you are walking through a school that was a huge challenge, and teachers are teaching, children are learning. Or even seeing a particular child who has had some real difficulty making progress, however small the steps are. 

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A longer version of Sajid’s article appears in our free ebook, alongside four articles from other key MAT leaders. Download your copy here. 

Discover more of our content for groups and trusts here. 

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The post How and why Prince Albert Community Trust takes on vulnerable schools appeared first on Arbor.

The debate around autonomy vs. alignment for schools in Trusts has been animated over the past few years, with some MATs giving their schools independence over their policies and others preferring a more centralised approach.

If we accept that trusts will always differ on how centralised to be, perhaps the more interesting question becomes: how do you create a trust which works really well together as one organisation, regardless of where you sit on that scale? 

What are the factors which create a successful, shared culture in a MAT? And how do you make sure the academies in your trust benefit from being part of a greater whole? 

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The importance of creating a shared culture in a MAT

To get a sense of the national picture, in February 2022 we surveyed 164 trust leaders from around the country. 94% of respondents agreed it’s important all schools in a MAT feel part of the same culture. In fact, many indicated that having a shared culture was fundamental to a MAT’s purpose; one respondent wrote,  ‘I would wonder what ‘the point in being a trust would be if there was no sense of a shared culture.”

Having said this, nearly 1 in 5 respondents said that their trust did not have one cohesive culture which all schools feel part of, with many emphasising that this was an ongoing journey for their MAT. 

One participant put this down to “each school [being] reluctant to take on ideas and processes the other schools use”, whilst another explained that “we have not had time to build a common ethos beyond our founders’ vision which was entrepreneurial.” For some MAT leaders, a shared culture is simply “a difficult thing to achieve when you are a big, mixed-phase MAT across different authorities.”

What are the foundations for a strong culture?

We asked those who felt they had already achieved a strong culture in their MAT about what they thought were the main factors that had led to this success. 78% of respondents to this question said that having a shared vision and values were the most important, with having clear leadership and shared staff opportunities also proving to be popular choices. One participant explained that, “shared vision and joined-up leadership are a precursor to successfully implementing any other measures.” 

This speaks to a wider trend, where respondents seemed to value structural, trust-level factors over teaching and learning or pupil-driven factors, such as having a standardised curriculum, sharing the same visual identity (e.g. uniforms) and having shared opportunities for pupils across the trust. 

What does the future of MAT culture look like?

With nearly 1 in 5 respondents saying they were yet to achieve a shared culture in their trust, we wanted to explore what some MAT leaders felt were the key drivers and best practices when it came to meaningful cultural change. To do this, we’ve compiled leaders’ viewpoints from five MATs across the country and put them together with our survey insights to create our latest ebook for MAT leaders, called Creating a Cohesive Trust. As well as our survey results and a question guide, hear from MAT leaders on how their trusts work together as one organisation, including discussions on:

• How to make meaningful cultural change in a Trust
• How far is too far when it comes to distance between schools?
• Why total honesty is the bedrock for a good MAT culture
• Prioritising pedagogy over Trust culture
• How to tailor communication and avoid creating a monoculture

Click here to download the full ebook.

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Want to read more MAT content? Get stuck in with our MAT MIS series, perfect for MAT Central Teams.

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