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. Finding great staff and keeping them can be hard.
Local mechanisms to support schools and leaders are just not as they were 10 years ago.
There is no suggestion that any trust, including ours can negate all and every challenge. However, we do believe that we provide that local support that schools and communities deserve.
We approach our shared services, with some broader principles which underpin our approach to school support.
A trust only flourishes and succeeds, when all its schools do. When headteachers are worried about standards, so are we. When leaders are anxious about staffing dilemmas, so are we. The schools are the trust and the trust is its schools. As a result, we see challenges through the same lens and look for solutions together.
Whilst we have individual and team expertise, specialism and remits – we are one entity. We talk to each other and have a shared mission to support. This ‘one stop’ shop means that leaders or governors do not spend time telling different people the same or similar things over and over again. For example, the interface between school improvement and HR support when persistent staff absence is a barrier to improving outcomes, or where a buildings issue has impacted on the IT fabric of the school and communications need to be sensitively supported.
One universal truth is that responsibilities and accountabilities ‘shift’ in a trust. The board (volunteers) carry ultimate responsibility, and this is exercised through the senior leaders of the trust. No school leader or governing body join a trust and abdicate or lose responsibility; it is simply to say that when a school is in a trust, there is a shared responsibility.
There are many people to help. That can mean a safe space to ‘vent’, walkthrough a problem to find a solution or the need for specialist support or additional capacity. That is what the central team are here to do. We serve schools. It is also incredibly helpful for headteachers when their line manager has been a headteacher.
We are a good home for talented and ambitious staff. We are committed to developing outstanding people in all our teams: recruiting, sharing and keeping the very best staff.
As one employer, trusts provide a unique opportunity for great people to support others and provide a scale of professional development support that is larger than one school can easily provide by itself. We are proud that Tenax is well placed to offer enhanced professional development opportunities for schools in our region:
All this together, helps us champion talent management, supports retention and provide a source of stability for our family of schools.