Our aim is that the Sycamore Church of England Trust becomes ‘the trust of choice’ for schools who share in our vision and values.
We believe in nurturing the values of each individual school and keeping the trust in their service, not vice versa. We are constantly seeking best practice and new thinking and most of this comes from schools within the Trust.
Having common processes increases the level of value all schools receive from the Trust. However, these processes refer to the operational running of the school (budgeting, financial management, estate management, safeguarding, HR processes, absence reporting). Existing Heads within the Trust will tell you that these common processes make the running of their school easier. The Trust does not have standardised ways of delivering the highest quality of education, believing that individual schools know the needs of their pupils better than anyone else can.
We do expect any school that joins the Trust to play an active role in developing this thinking and to be open to sharing their best practices and taking on board the best practices of others. Much more important than schemes or processes, joining the Trust does imply a commitment to the family of schools which together can provide a higher quality of education than any one school could.
Joining our Trust offers a great opportunity for schools to work together to develop and share practice; to provide development and leadership opportunities for staff; and to challenge each other to provide the highest quality teaching and learning experiences for all children within our schools.
We believe that the expansion of the trust will provide opportunities for an increasingly skilled workforce, staff progression, career growth and succession planning to further strengthen the work of the trust and the staff within it so that we are regarded as an employer of choice.
We aim to create a network of outstanding schools that flourish and thrive through collaboration and interaction.
Our strategy is for growth with care, ensuring the trust has the capacity to meet the needs of each joiner school in terms of support, challenge and leadership, without compromising the core purpose of any existing school within the trust.
We have collated some useful resources within this section that may assist you when considering joining our Trust. If you would like to discuss this further we would be delighted to hear from you.