Please note: Academies Enterprise Trust (AET) is now Lift Schools, this post may reference the name of the trust at time of posting.
Every AET school exists to serve its immediate community. At their core, schools belong to their people. What they think of the education we offer is at least as important as the verdict of an external agency or regulator.
Unlike adults, who typically have the choice of where they work, many families have only a limited choice when selecting a school for their children. I’m all too aware that for many of our pupils, attending an AET school will not have been their first choice or, in some cases, it was their only option.
Across AET's primary schools, last year, 96% of pupils who were offered a place had put that school as their first choice, compared with 92% nationally. However, there were 14 schools where the percentage was below the average.
In our secondary schools, 82% of places offered were given to those who had identified us as their first choice, slightly below the national average of 83%. In all, 10 secondary schools (out of 21) were below the average.
With 57 schools nationwide, from Middlesbrough to the Isle of Wight, the challenges and opportunities within our different communities are unique. Naturally, this means AET is more susceptible to feeling remote and detached from families and communities than many other trusts.
And so, over the past few years, we have thought deeply about whether our schools are really structured in a way that allows us to understand and meet the wide and often complex needs of our children and families.
While we had opportunities to provide educational quality assurance and oversight elsewhere, local governance was an untapped space where we could engage meaningfully and hear local voices. Yet, like many governance models, our previous approach was inflexible, transactional, and focused exclusively on compliance.
So, this year, we set up Academy Councils in all our schools - merging previous governing boards and parent advisory boards to create a new governance model with local democratic accountability as its focus.
The function of every Academy Council is to look at what it is truly like to be a pupil or adult in one of our schools and to hold AET to account to meet their needs. They do not monitor academic performance but rather the broader lived experience of our young people during school.
With a diverse representation of community members, including two parents, two community members, a local authority representative, two staff members, a trust link member, and the principal, we want Academy Councils to give us a true feedback loop so that we understand how decisions affect them locally.
Effective implementation is the linchpin of educational success. Yet, all too often, we have blind spots that stop us from seeing how different decisions, initiatives, and programmes will land in context. To truly make a difference in our children's lives, we have to be attuned to their surroundings.
After appointing nearly 500 new voluntary members in one year, at AET, we now have a mechanism to develop an understanding of the conditions that matter.
Because this absence of community voice in decision-making has been an issue for our trust in the past. Many AET schools have historically had adversarial relationships with their community and parents, which has bred mistrust.
In those cases where we are having to rebuild relationships with parents and staff, this will take much more than Academy Councils.
The fractures in these relations will take time to heal, but we are optimistic that forging partnerships through a meaningful approach to governance is a strong foundation to build from. In each of our schools, Academy Councils are starting conversations and action on what it takes to deliver an excellent education that unlocks opportunity and choice - locally.
The best schools look outwardly: working with the community to develop local experiences that showcase the opportunities available to students, partnering with neighbouring schools to install capacity into their local education systems, and freeing up facilities to be used by the community.
Regardless of how they evolve over time or whoever sponsors them in the future, our schools will outlast us. While approaches like Academy Councils may be new and experimental, we hope that their principles of localism will support communities better - both now and in the future.
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