The following is a very high-level summary of the process for joining a trust. There are slight differences depending on if you are a community school or which Diocese your church school is in. It is not a quick process.
Different governing bodies and leadership teams will take different routes to selecting which trust to join (if any). The key point that will be explored through the engagement and consent phase is about the right ‘fit’. It is worth noting that the whole governing body is the decision maker, so whilst key leaders and governors may be charged with the scoping; it is the majority cooperate decision that is key (below).
For schools in the Diocese of Rochester and Chichester; it is vitally important that you talk with the right colleagues at the earliest stage of your exploration. They will help steer your early thinking. For example, they may know that a trust is just about to take on a group of new schools in the near future and may not be able to grow presently. No church school can join a trust without consent.
To progress through DfE consent, there will need to be a clear set of minutes that both capture the desire to academise and which trust the governing body have elected to join. Procedurally this could be through a standard meeting with a clear agenda item or an extraordinary meeting, where this is the sole focus. That often depends on how the exploring phase undertaken.
For Tenax, with the decision made, we engage with you like you are one of the family. You are fully included in all of the things we do and offer. This massively helps us understand one another and prepare for the transfer.
It is critical to take staff, families and wider stakeholders with us. We have a range of established engagement activities that ensure that we fully meet the DfE’s requirements to engage and consult. In our experience, with school leaders, governors and staff on board, almost all parental concerns are allayed. We explain clearly all of the things that will not change. We respond to questions or concerns.
Whilst our understanding of all the strengths of your school is key, it is also important for us to understand any support or resource that you may need beyond what is ‘normal’. As result, we undertake a raft of due diligence activity. We report to our Board on ‘risk’. It is this stage that the trust Board vote on the proposition of the school joining Tenax.
While it is extremely rare, there are instances where significant complexity—typically related to land and buildings—emerges at this stage, preventing us from proceeding. It may seem nonsensical to reach this point without identifying such issues earlier. However, the sequencing is intentional: we avoid undertaking costly and extensive due diligence on a “maybe” or “perhaps.” Like every trust we know, we commit to thorough due diligence only once a school has made a firm commitment.
Schools in the Diocese of Chichester will engage in their consent processes with us.
Community schools and those who have kept the Diocese of Rochester informed and secured support, move to secure Department of Education consent. Accepting that processes may evolve, this is broadly a synergy of our collective thoughts as to why this is in the interest of the school and the trust. Tenax will have to show how we will support you; you will articulate why you want to be in a trust. Tenax will do almost all of this work.
With consent, we move to make the transfer happen. This is the most complex area, where legal advice and often project management support is needed.
There is typically a lull in this phase, where others do important work behind the scenes on our behalf and we get on with the day jobs.
We set up project meetings to ensure we are all up to date, we understand where we are against timelines and we make sure we know what we have to do and by when.
This is the mechanism that allows for the full protection of staff employment. In other words, people’s jobs, salaries, pensions, continuous service remains and transfers. This is an important stage that your HR provider and staff unions will have experienced 100s of times. It is almost always seamless. It is vitally important and has the right level of formality, but in reality it is invariably smooth for all.
After 12-18 months of work, the transfer is the least exciting part of the process. Your school as was on the Friday, is the same on the Monday when it becomes a Tenax school. We of course will be delighted, will work with you on the communications and engagement but it can feel a little underwhelming after all of the hard work.
It is said from the outset that most of the work to transfer a school and many of the things that change are the back-office systems. There is a raft of things that all our schools have to do the same way for the trust to run; for example, the use our finance software. We will be planning after the decision stage to onboard you, and provide extensive support to your office team to make sure that this part of the process is as smooth as possible.
