CardinalNewmanCatholicPrimary School

Arch Road, Hersham, Surrey KT12 4QT

Telephone: (01932) 222536 Fax: (01932) 232638

Headteacher: Ms G Keany.

WOKING AND WEYBRIDGE DEANERY SCHOOLS MEETING - 23 NOVEMBER 2015

Attendees:

SCHOOL NAME
Cardinal Newman / David Bone
Tom Bray
Chris Broome
Jane Cursons
Gina Di Gregorio
Gerry Flower
Jill Keany
Claire Madden
Wayne Mason
Paul Mills
Maggie Ward
Diocese / Julie Ann Birch
Joe Davis
Joe Dunne
Steven Ravenscroft
Carole Ann Roycroft
Marie Ryan
Holy Family / Brenda Butler
Rachel Conde
Mike Meredith
Anthea O’Neil
Steve Tindall
Suzanne Wright
Salesian, Chertsey / James Kibble
Aioan Lynch
Peter O’Brien
Mike Roycroft
Ed Smith
SJB / James Granville Hamshar
St Albans / Martin Brannigan
Eve Crampsie
David Reddaway
St Anne’s / Clare Cochrane
John Hoskins
Marian King
Janie Lee
Leanne Simpson
St Augustine’s / Sara Davison
Paul Dineen
Mirek Gliniecki
Liz Ray
Alison Walsh
St Cuthberts / Paul Fenton
Dominic Moloney
St Charles Borromeo / Lorraine Flower
Cathy Hobday
Stephen Holt
Kathy Stokes
St Hugh of Lincoln / Andy Challis
Margaret Claire Embleton
Michael George
Mike O’Donovan
St Pauls / Andrew Burton
M F Johnson
Peter Webb
The Marist / Juliette Kelly
POSITIVES / CONCERNS
Small Trust Group and empowered
Expectation working correctly
Ability to recruit from a wider pool of expertise
Mutual support within the MATT and across the Diocese / Loss of identity and authority through local governing bodies.
Undertaking this with a background of tight budgets, whereas first tranche of academies got more money.
Limited capacity within small schools to undertake this large project
Removal of bureaucracy
Represented on Advisory Board
Flexibility and choice / Would every school be represented on Advisory Board?
Comfortable with a few Heads and Chairs of Governors?
Potential for misrepresentation
Loss of identity
Lack of control
Protecting Catholicity / Financial implications. Protection of individual schools’ Governors’ Fund. Ring fenced?
Process of the election for Board Members. Who comes forward with them?
Heads and Chairs Forum. Mix of Chairs, Governors and Headteachers, operational as well as strategical vision.
Diverse set of skills. / Important in the early years for each school to have a say.
Concern about loss of identity
Interest could be misrepresented.
Every school to be represented. How that process of change is managed.
Accounting Officer – tenure of the appointment. Unclear how that person would be appointed. With Good or Outstanding schools how that role would be decided. Clear responsibility, clearer accountability. Would the individual be a Trustee on the Board and get to vote?
Powerful voice
Reduced Board / Lack of clarity on different boards – Board structure.
Potential number of people.
Voice of the school diluted
Loss of identity
Controls need to be mapped out
Staff development
Catholic education of the 13 schools
Be able to maintain certain teaching resources
Starting again – do something different – purchasing impartiality / Volunteer roles. Skills set. Role of governance recruiting. Quality of appointments and tenure. What type of skill set?
Difficult to take School hat off and put on the MAT hat
Ensuring impartiality
Volunteers – personal circumstances. Able to give time needed. Element of remuneration?
Exclusive rather than inclusive.
Bureaucracy more rather than less. Too many layers.
Make-up of the Board – one school one vote.
Could share resources now do not need to be a MAT – Federation or similar. Establish a relationship first before going further. Do we know one another well enough?
If already Good or Outstanding, how much better can we get? Does it improve for the children? Why are we doing it?

Reponses to positives/concerns

Background

  • Big step. Academies were originally established to raise standards. Giving schools greater flexibility, giving them what they could not get through the Local Authority mechanism. Money directly from DfE to Academy Trust. Driving education standards and trying something different. Money from Central Government to the Trust rather than Local Authority. Not about failing schools, not about addressing a failure, about school support. Group of schools working together, shared ethos and common values. Very best of what is good within the Group of schools for the benefit of the children being educated. Background of falling budgets. Schools working together. Replicating in a better way what the Local Authority historically was doing.
  • Idea of the academy model, school to school support. Around group of schools coming together with a common purpose, shared ethos. Buying services together; procuring IT together. Savings on offer but to drive it quite hard. Must be robust. Getting ethos and sharing of vision correct.

Loss of Identity

  • This concern heard a lot. Trust to determine how they operate. Education expertise in one school could be common policies, admission process. Need rigid templates, secure significant improvement, and common set of values. Group of Good and Outstanding schools know what children need and what works for the local environment. Common statutory policies but also scheme of delegation, individual schemes in place, what’s best, what market, know the children. Risk of loss of identity – challenge. Board in place who understand. Board of Trustees, Directors of the company. Decision that will be taken in conjunction with the Diocese. Group of Schools to decide. Loss of identify can be addressed by looking at the structure of the Board. Board of Trustees – few people, keep small. Strategic to have the oversight view and right balance of skills. Forum – body more flexibility who might sit on the board, one school, and one voice. Good balance of Heads and Chairs. Views of each school have to fit into the overall piece.

Budget

  • Could involve extra expense rather than less expense. Realistic to assume external structure of some sort and will take time. DfE money could be available for infrastructure to begin with. £50k for Sponsor MATwould be used very quickly. Needs to be robust and for the longer term.

Capacity and Ability to carry out

  • Capacity within schools to undertake this process. Primary and Secondary in respect of capacity – who can do what. Primary Schools start at the moment, no time to support Secondary . Secondary School extra capacity to help and support. Not necessary a secondary school. Groups of Primaries. Looking at the schools within the Deanery and who has got the capacity to lead this, not necessary secondary school.

Misrepresentation

  • Making sure voice heard.

Election of Board Members

  • Board of Directors of Company. Options. Diocese appoints 51% of the main board. Diocesewould look to the potential MAT. Appropriate skills mix in place. Non Diocese – look to the skills the Board can bring.

Governors’ Fund Ring Fence

  • School Funds – money raised at school through PTA. Those funds continue to be raised for the benefit of your school and applied for your school. Ring fenced. Master Funding agreement with supplementary funding agreements for individual schools. DfE will work out how much money individual schools will receive i.e. number of pupils, SEND, etc. Main board have ability to pool those funds together. Main Board will have certain operating costs in terms of finance and take a bit of money from individual school budgets for those needs. Freedom on how they apply that money. Perhaps Capital Programme across the Trust. Create a central pot of money and schools can bid into it for the future i.e. redecoration of a hall. School in difficulty in the future because the funds are pooled the DfE would expect you to look at the funds in the Trust. Trust to make up the difference.
  • Due diligence. Make sure the finances of every school meet standards and each school looking as good as they can be. Clear on the business model and how the finances going to work.

Question: Governors’ Fund

Directors of the Board have to have full responsibility of the accounts, one school gets into difficulty; information from the directors of the Board which schools have good resources and may put pressure on local governing body to make good some of the deficit another school has. Possibly via a loan.

Answer:

Source of fundraising activitiesat school. Parents have given money for that purpose. Charitable status and only used for that particular purpose. Restricted Funds. However, governors set a budget and if they make a surplus from DfE funds that money not ring fenced and could come under scrutiny from the Trust.

Question:

School Account fair game for the Trust but is Governors’ Fund parents pay contributions into vulnerable.

Answer

Governors’ Fund put in place, set out quite clearly Governors’ Fund for the school purpose and not Trust. Under the Charities Act Governors’ Fund already a restricted fund.

Question: Main budget

Answer: Ensure policy in place. Schools in difficulty get more money from the Local Authority, transferring that to the MAT. Primary and Secondary Schools can vote to withhold from that budget.

Question: Structure Board – How Is it decided:

Answer

Term of Office: suggest four years, can make it shorter, perhaps two years. Not desirable to make it shorter than two years.

Question: Accounting Officer – What is meant by that?

Answer

Within every school the Head is the Accounting Officer; accountable to ensure it runs as it should. Academy Trust would still need an Accounting Officer, one person to fulfil the role. They need to be able to stand up in front of Parliament and explain to Parliament and Select Committee why things have failed within the Trust. Within the Academy Financial Handbook it sets out what is expected of the Accounting Officer and their accountability duties. Person appointed must have appropriate oversight of financial transactions. Regularity – income spent in the way it is. Propriety – standards of conduct and behaviour. One of the Headteachers could fulfil role. Have to think who that person will be. Person needs to ensure a good solid Trust with appropriate controls in place to ensure that expenses can be delivered for the benefit of the Trust. With a group of Good and Outstanding schools more difficult to agree. Someone could volunteer for a limited period of time or take it on, on an ongoing basis. Perhaps a Head coming to the end of their career who would take it on, on a part time basis. Right person to fulfil role, robust, make it work properly. As part of the application to the DfE this person would need to be identified.

Everybody working together, making a bigger pie. No measure of the potential. What are the areas were these opportunities are. Go in slowly, grow slowly and change slowly.

Question – Can we work together before we decide?

Answer: Expressing an interest, part of the conversation and can back off. Governors’ resolution that school become a MAT. 13 schools all going at once would be a challenge. Few go forward, work together, at the same time everybody else can be collaborating.

NEXT STEPS

Another Diocese prepared a Memorandum of Understanding which enabled some schools to work together prior to joining the MAT. Group of Schools within the Deanery to sign, some move at a faster speed, getting to know each other.

Question: Has a school ever decided to pull out from a MATT once in?

Answer: Yes but it is messy but can be done. DfE too could also force a school to move if the Trust became too large.

Question: Transfer of governors from current Governing Body to new Governing Body. Current governing body could be tampered with. Governors do not automatically transfer.

Answer: In theory yes but with Good or Outstanding schools you do not change excellence. Element of leap of faith. Governors can be moved from Good or Outstanding schools to weaker schools now by the Bishop. Ability to share and ability to move staff around. Flexibility.

GOIND FORWARD

Next steps. Need to decide whether it is something for us. Do we want to do it and if yes express an interest. Do it in a phased approach but with inclusive involvement of those schools who are tentative

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