Newham Schools Community Trust

NEWHAM SCHOOLS COMMUNITY TRUST

THE PROPOSED PARTNERSHIP OF

LISTER, ROKEBY AND SARAH BONNELL SCHOOLS

BRIEFING FOR GOVERNORS

February 4th 2015

A. STRATEGY

A1. Why is the partnership of Lister, Rokeby and Sarah Bonnell being proposed?

The three Headteachers are individually and collectively committed to their schools achieving an Ofsted judgement of Outstanding within two years. In an increasingly challenging educational landscape the Headteachers believe that this can only be achieved through close partnership working with other strong schools.

These are three very good schools that are each continuing to improve. The schools have similar and complementary strengths that will enable effective and impactful partnership working.

The Headteachers also share a commitment to comprehensive, inclusive and locally accountable schools that support the achievement of all young people in Newham. Their admissions policies are non-selective and based on where students live.

The proposed partnership is also a response firstly, to a Local Authority with reducing capacity and capability to support schools that are performing well and secondly, an evolving Newham schools landscape with a blend of schools, academies and free schools educating children and young people.

A2. What will the benefits of the partnership be for the schools?

The Headteachers have identified four key areas of benefit for their schools.

1. Strengthened, continuing school improvement: the sharing and analysis of data to identify areas of both excellent and weaker performance to guide school improvement planning; creating networks of staff and senior leaders to share and develop best practice; development of internal quality assurance and peer review programmes to benchmark and verify school performance and; coordinated external verification of school performance.

2. Enhanced staff development, retention and recruitment: development of bespoke staff CPD programmes more closely aligned to support school improvement; tailored senior, middle and subject leadership development programmes to enable school improvement and enhance succession planning; subject and specialism –based curriculum, teaching and learning programmes; better retention and recruitment of staff as a larger single employer offering attractive career opportunities.

3. Richer teaching, curriculum and extending learning: subject-lead networks to share good practice and respond to curriculum changes; increased viability of offering specialist subjects to students; development of specialist programmes for particular groups of students; wider extra-curricular programmes through cost-effective joint commissioning; enhanced support and care for students with particular needs; enhanced vocational offer across three schools.

4. Greater collective and individual protection: greater ability to shape the local and national landscape for the benefit of students, staff and other schools; protection of individual school ethos and values within strong partnership; joint commissioning and procurement of services and resources to secure cost-efficiencies; sustain comprehensive and inclusive education.

A3. Why does the partnership need to be a multi academy trust?

The Headteachers believe that school partnership can only be truly effective when collective accountability, responsibility and sustainability is locked into the partnership structure.

Otherwise there is risk that either changes of personnel reduce a school’s commitment to partnership or, short-term school priorities distract Headteachers and staff from partnership working, both resulting in the partnership becoming less effective.

Government policy is such that the multi academy trust is really the only viable, sustainable partnership structure open to schools, especially with the associated diminishing role of Local Authorities in supporting partnership working between schools.

Schools that are under-performing are required to become sponsored academies. The risk is that a drop in results or a negative inspection forces a school become a sponsored academy as part of a large academy chain. With nearly 70% of secondary schools having become academies, it also seems increasingly likely that schools will be required to become academies. Other partnership models such as Schools Companies or Cooperative Trusts do not provide any greater protection against this risk than continuing as a local authority maintained school.

By establishing its own multi academy trust based on strong partnership working the schools will be more able to sustain improvement and therefore less vulnerable to external intervention.

B. GOVERNANCE

B1. What is a multi academy trust?

The multi academy trust is the legal entity that enters into Funding Agreements with the Secretary of State for Education. The Funding Agreements set out the Trust’s responsibilities and accountabilities for the effective running of member academies. A multi academy trust operates more than one academy whereas an academy trust would operate just one academy.

The MAT is a Company Limited by Guarantee, registered at Companies House with a company number. The MAT is established by Members who are, in effect, the shareholders of the company. The Members appoint and hold to account a Board of Directors/Trustees.

As the MAT is a Company Limited by Guarantee, it must comply with company law and because it has charitable exemption, the MAT must also comply with charity law. As a Company Limited by Guarantee the MAT can only carry forward any financial surpluses from its annual activities: it cannot pay out dividends (unlike a Company Limited by Shareholding).

The MAT is run in compliance with its Articles of Association, which are a model version developed by the Department of Education. These Articles include the MAT’s charitable objects which are “to further for pubic benefit education …by establishing, maintaining, carrying on. Managing and developing schools offering a broad and balanced curriculum.” Only the Members have the right to change the Articles and the changes are subject to company and charity law.

Prior to the MAT being established the DfE will need to approve the appointment of the Members and thereafter any changes of Members must be notified to the Secretary of State.

B2. How is the multi academy trust accountable?

The MAT Members and Directors are ultimately accountable to the Secretary of State for Education through the Funding Agreements.

The Secretary of State has the right to terminate these agreements in five specific circumstances;

• the Academy Trust has breached the provisions of (the Funding Agreements); or
• the standards of performance of pupils at the academy are unacceptably low; or
• there has been a serious breakdown in the way the academy is managed or governed; or
• the safety of pupils is threatened, including due to breakdown in discipline; or
• financial mismanagement or misuse of public funds.

The MAT Members and Directors are also accountable through company and charity law for their decisions and actions (see B5).

B3. How will the proposed multi academy trust be run?

The MAT will be run in compliance with the Articles of Association and Funding Agreements.

Initially, Members and Directors will need to be appointed to establish the MAT as a legal entity. Then the Directors will form a Board with the responsibility to run the MAT effectively, efficiently and compliantly. Each school will have a Local Governing Body with authority to run their school delegated by the Directors.

DfE policy on Members and Directors is evolving, subject to change and can vary between officers. However, three key principles have remained reasonably constant.

• Members should not be Directors and vice versa, to create separation of responsibility and accountability.
• Employees of the MAT such as Headteachers should not be Members to avoid conflict of interest and influence over the governance of the MAT.
• Limit on Trust employees such as Headteachers being more than 1/3 of Directors

The composition of the Members and Directors is typically a balancing act between representation of member schools and the scope to appoint individuals with the blend of expertise required to run the MAT. These areas of expertise include finance, legal, HR and business alongside education.

The Governor working group have considered the appointment of Members and Directors carefully. They agreed the importance of each school being represented equally in both Members and Directors, school representatives being in the majority on both bodies and the importance of schools retaining control of the Members, given their power to amend the Trust Articles. The group also agreed that having independent Members and Directors was important to provide external perspective and challenge.

The Governor working group propose the following;

Members

• Seven (7) Members made of;
• Each Local Governing Body would appoint two Members [total of six (6)] who would not be Directors aka ‘School Members’
• Independent Member appointed by the ‘School Members’

Directors

• Up to eleven (11) Directors including;
• Each Local Governing Body to appoint two directors including either the Chair or Vice Chair [total of six (6]
• Each Headteacher [total of three (3)]
• Two (2) independent Directors to be appointed by the Directors to provide specific expertise not provided by the school Directors

The composition of the Local Governing Body will be left to each school to determine except for the requirement, as set out in the Articles of Association, for at least two parent governors.

B4. How will decision-making within the MAT be managed and how will the autonomy of individual schools be protected?

The Governor working group considered very carefully the importance of Governing Bodies and Headteachers having the freedom to run their schools as they see fit. They also recognised that the Members and Directors, many of whom will be current Governors, will have collective responsibilities and accountabilities that can only fulfilled by the Board retaining certain decision-making powers.

The Governor working group has developed a detailed scheme of delegation that sets out the decision-making powers of the MAT Board, Local Governing Bodies and MAT Committees. This scheme of delegation sits alongside the Articles of Association but does not require DfE approval: the Directors can amend it as they see fit. Examples of the scheme in practice will be presented to Governors on February 4th.

The role of the Trust Board would be a combination of strategic oversight and planning, together with high-level approval of financial and employment matters. The group agreed that the Trust Board should have important role in monitoring and challenging the collective performance of member schools, given that educational under-performance would be the primary reason for the Secretary of State to intervene in any multi academy trust.

The role of Local Governing Bodies (LGB) would be very similar to now, particularly in determining and monitoring the school’s teaching, learning and curriculum plans and policies. Staffing, deployment and management would also remain a local responsibility.

The Headteachers would form a Leadership Group with a formal, accountable role within the Trust to develop plans for partnership working and collaboration. There would not be a CEO but one Headteacher would be appointed to the statutory role Trust Accounting Officer.

The group discussed the role of committees in providing specialist scrutiny and monitoring in Trust-wide areas such as finance, HR and employment. The group noted that excessive bureaucracy was to be avoided.

B5. What are the risks for Trust Members and Directors?

As a Company Limited by Guarantee the Members have a personal liability of £10 should the company be wound up and have outstanding liabilities. The Directors have no personal financial liability and, as long as their decisions and actions are reasonable, made in good faith and would not be judged negligent, would not be subject to the principal risk of being barred from being a Director.

C. FINANCES

C1. How will schools be funded as part of the Trust?

The funding for academies comes direct from the Education Funding Agency, a department within the Department for Education. Each school will continue to be funded according to the Newham Council funding formula for secondary schools until such time as there is change in the funding formula for academies. This funding is called the General Annual Grant or GAG for short. Student-led SEND funding will continue to be paid to schools by the Local Authority.

The schools will also receive additional funding in the form of the Education Services Grant. This is per-pupil funding to cover the costs of academy status and the responsibilities taken on by the MAT from the local authority.

The Governor working group agreed to the key principle that each school would continue to receive its school funding (GAG). The Education Services Grant would be directed to the Trust to meet the central cost of running the Trust and providing services to schools.

C2. How will the Trust and school finances be governed and managed?

The Trust is required to comply with a range of financial legislation, regulations and contracts including;

• company law,
• charity law,
• Funding Agreements with Department for Education
• Trust Articles of Association
• Education Funding Agency’s Academies Finance Handbook and guidance

In particular, the Trust must produce a Trustees Report and an Annual Statement of Accounts, which have been independently audited by an auditor.

The Trust is required to submit a budget forecast to the Education Funding Agency (EFA) in the July preceding the new academic and financial year. (Note: academies operate a September to August financial year,which is obviously aligned to the school year). Then the Trust is required to submit its audited accounts and a budget return statement in the January after the academic and financial year. The EFA can carry out the reviews rather like a financial Ofsted and there have been recent examples of Trusts being put into financial Special Measures.

The working group agreed to propose that each school LGB be responsible for developing and proposing its annual budget. Then a Finance Committee, made up representatives from each LGB with appropriate financial expertise, would review the three school budgets. Their role would be to check the sustainability of the proposed budgets, investigate and understand any significant variations between schools or compared with previous years. In parallel, the Finance Committee would review the central Trust budget proposed by the Leadership Group. They would then recommend an overall Trust budget incorporating the school and Trust central budgets.

The Trust Board would approve the overall Trust budget.

Thereafter it would be the responsibility of the LGB to monitor their school budget and the Finance Committee to monitor the overall Trust budget and report to the Trust Board. Monthly reports would be produced for all involved.

A separate Audit Committee would be responsible for overseeing the independent audit of accounts as well as managing the rolling programme of internal audit.

D. STAFF

D1. How will the employment of staff be affected?

Currently, all staff are employed by the London Borough of Newham. Should the three schools establish the multi academy trust then all staff would transfer to be employed by the Trust. This is similar to the old grant-maintained status or the current Foundation or Voluntary Aided (VA) status where the Governing Body is the employer.

The transfer of staff is subject to specific legislation called the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment 2006 Regulations or TUPE for short. This means that staff are legally protected to transfer under their current employment terms and conditions, including pensions.

The regulations require that the current employer, the London Borough of Newham, must consult with unions, professional associations and staff on the transfer. Part of this consultation process is that the current employer must write a letter called the Regulation 13 letter setting out the reasons and implications of the transfer of employment.

The regulations also require that the future employer, the multi academy trust, sets out to the current employer any proposed changes (the “Measures”) that could affect employees. Examples include plans to re-organise staff or introduce new ways of working. The working group does not envisage proposing any Measures. Staff would receive copies of both the Measures letter and Regulation 13 letters.

D2. How will staff terms & conditions be affected?

As the employer the Trust would be responsible for developing, implementing and monitoring all policies relating to the employment of staff such as pay, performance management, discipline and equal opportunities. Almost all of these policies would transfer as a protected term and condition at the point of transfer. Like any large employer the Trust would need to consult with staff on any future changes to policy.