Joining Us
Thinking about joining a trust is a big step.
It is a decision that falls on the shoulders of a few and carries great weight. You can arrange an informal conversation to with us to help answer those early questions.
Our ambition to grow includes:
• Adding additional secondary provision; to strengthen opportunities to share expertise, services and collaborate
• Working with more community schools who share our values
• Increasing our specialist capacity, either through a special school joining the family or mainstream schools with an additional provision
• Continuing to serve both dioceses and growing the number of primary schools in Tenax
The information in this section of our website is intended to help support early thinking about working with a trust. Just as every school has its unique characteristics, so do trusts. We have tried to explore a few things here that, experience has shown us, often come up in early conversations.
2024 onwards has seen a raft of exciting evolutions at Tenax. Our new CEO has direct experience of growing and developing trusts. He and our recently appointed Director of Education have both worked and led outside of Kent and East Sussex. Our Board, with many new trustees, are ambitious to grow and evolve the work of the trust.
Headship can be lonely and difficult. Leaders will recognise that there is less resource than there ever was, we are doing more for less and there can feel like a rising tide of expectations and complaints. Find out how we support our schools and leaders.
Made up of core support functions, our Shared Services team includes HR, finance, compliance, governance, IT and estates.
Every school is aiming to secure better. Better for pupils/students, better for staff. We do not see ‘improvement’ as a deficit but do see it could be; we see improvement as our core business.
Our offer will evolve year on year, based on what schools tell us and what we need.
Read our 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.
Answers to some of the questions we are often asked at the early stages of conversations with schools.