A TRUST WHERE
OUR VISION, ETHOS, MISSION AND VALUES
“All will Succeed”
Strategic Plan 2022-2025
Welcome to The EFA Trust's strategic improvement plan which is designed to shape the direction of the trust through to 2025.
The strategy will be reviewed and referred to throughout the next three years and will underpin the work taking place within individual schools across the Trust.
Through regular monitoring and review both at Board and Leadership level it is expected not only that our objectives will be achieved but also that they can adapt to changing circumstances.
Our 4 strategic goals
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Quality of education
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Raising Standards
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Leadership and Governance
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Developing Capacity
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We believe that effort is a key component to success and achievement. To be able to be resilient and overcome adversity enables students and staff to exceed expectations and overcome any challenges they may face in their academic, personal and professional journey.
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Implement the ESSA continuous curriculum raising standards, building confidence and making transition exciting and continuous
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Develop a comprehensive and collaborative trust-wide teaching and learning programme to ensure all our staff have the right skills to raise standards, deliver excellent teaching and learning and share good practice.
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Each school’s curriculum continues to be inspiring in both its breadth and depth, igniting a love of learning in all our children and young people. It is always relevant, built around the learner and develops thinking skills alongside high quality and challenging learning.
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It is carefully designed for all learners to access, to make progress, acquire a solid foundation in knowledge, skills, behaviours and understanding of the world around them.
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Through an exemplary Safeguarding policy, ensure that all children across our Trust are safe as well as having equality of opportunity.
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Through an exemplary Pupil Premium Plan, ensure that all children across our Trust are having equality of opportunity.
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Celebrate the diversity of our Trust, proactively improving diversity and inclusion so that everyone in our community is involved
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Implement the ESSA continuous curriculum raising standards, building confidence and making transition exciting and continuous
-
Develop a comprehensive and collaborative trust-wide teaching and learning programme to ensure all our staff have the right skills to raise standards, deliver excellent teaching and learning and share good practice.
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Each school’s curriculum continues to be inspiring in both its breadth and depth, igniting a love of learning in all our children and young people. It is always relevant, built around the learner and develops thinking skills alongside high quality and challenging learning.
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It is carefully designed for all learners to access, to make progress, acquire a solid foundation in knowledge, skills, behaviours and understanding of the world around them.
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Through an exemplary Safeguarding policy, ensure that all children across our Trust are safe as well as having equality of opportunity.
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Through an exemplary Pupil Premium Plan, ensure that all children across our Trust are having equality of opportunity.
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Celebrate the diversity of our Trust, proactively improving diversity and inclusion so that everyone in our community is involved
Raising Standards
We want to secure the best possible outcomes for children so they can fulfil their potential. We recognise that children need different levels of support, motivation and challenge as they progress through school and we need to ensure that all children succeed with us. We want our children to have equitable access to our curriculum and will never lower our expectations to help them achieve this, but instead increase our levels of support and challenge where necessary.
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All Trustees and Governors have the knowledge and understanding to enable them to hold schools to account for the outcomes achieved by all groups of children.
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All schools strive for excellence, with above the national average progress in Good Level of Development in the EYFS.
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All schools strive for excellence, with above the national average for expected progress in Reading, Writing and Maths in KS1 and KS2.
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All schools strive for excellence, with above the national average for expected progress and attainment at KS4.
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In all schools, the gap between vulnerable pupils narrows each year.
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Overall attendance in all schools to be above national average and persistent absenteeism to be below the national average.
Leadership and
Governance
Strong leadership at all levels across the Trust is key to the success of our schools and in turn the outcomes for our children. We believe in operating in an open and transparent manner and whilst school leaders have an individual responsibility for the children in their school, they also feel responsible for ensuring children across the Trust have the best opportunities and work collaboratively together to achieve this.
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The Trust Board set clear strategic goals and monitor them rigorously to ensure improved outcomes
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Implement a trust-wide Continuous Professional Development programme so we can grow capacity to support each other and external schools. A robust trust-wide quality assurance framework, involving consistent documentation and rigorous appraisal, helps to support the school leaders in delivering the best outcomes for children.
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Develop a comprehensive recruitment and retention strategy that incorporates a consistent trust wide performance management system and career development path.
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Through rigorous self-evaluation and school improvement planning, with due reference to preparation for and outcomes of statutory inspections, leaders have a clear and ambitious vision for delivering high quality education for all pupils.
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The positive well-being of all pupils and staff is promoted through consistently applied support, timely intervention where appropriate, and effective working partnerships with external agencies.
Developing
Capacity
Building capacity is a priority for the EFA Trust. Education funding is challenging and therefore we need systems in place that support staff at all levels. We need to offer staff high quality professional support and develop specialists who can enhance pedagogical practice. The Trust needs to ensure that its resources are being used to the greatest effect to help our children to realise their full potential.
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All academies to be the school of choice within their area and for this to be reflected in the number of eligible pupils choosing the school in Reception.
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Maintain a robust and sustainable approach to finance, informed by a Business Plan, that maximises value for money, minimises the risk of fraud or misappropriation, and supports our academies in achieving our objectives.
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All stakeholders to participate, as appropriate, in ongoing review of the future strategic direction of the Trust, including the exploration of opportunities for new partnerships.
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Keep under review the Scheme of Delegation, so that it ensures good lines of communication, clarity of roles and responsibilities and a focus for Local Academy Governing Committees on teaching and learning, standards and performance.
FINANCE
We want to have stewardship of a trust which is solvent, which has the necessary reserves to enable us to approve spending on the resources and estates of the trust where necessary, in order that the those who lead our schools are able to focus their attentions on quality of education.
We hold reserves equal to between 10 and 15 percent of our ongoing annual income.
We have a proactive approach to income generation.
We have a strategic approach to approving non-budgeted capital expenditure. This means we have a specific and different approach to:
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Requests for spending which will and will not cause our cumulative reserves to drop below 10% over the 3 year forecast period.
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Requests for ‘investment spending’ on assets that are likely to bring income which covers some of all of the initial investment over the 3 year forecast period.
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Requests for spending which will ensure we are compliant from a statutory perspective, or which are required for pupil safety reasons.
We exercise smart strategic planning.
This means our budget includes depreciation, where we have cost out the capital expenditure we know we’ll need to cover over the next 5 years because we have audited the current state of our depreciable assets.
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This means we know what our forecast 3-5 year budget looks like if:
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We do or don’t have to bear the increased costs of the Teacher Pension Scheme.
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We do or don’t have to bear the increased costs of incremental pay drift over the next five years, versus the 3-year trend of our average salaries remaining constant, bar an estimated 2% year-on-year increase.
PEOPLE
We want to have stewardship of a trust which is an employer of choice, where we have recruited the right people to the right roles in which they’re able to have an impact, and where we retain high-quality staff by offering attractive employment conditions and interesting, valuable work.
Performance management is fair, not overly complex, and holds people to account whilst helping the managers and the trust as an employer understand their development needs and career aspirations.
Staff morale is high.
We are able to recruit to posts, because our offer is attractive.
Staff attendance is high.
We are able to retain high-quality staff, and whilst recruitment and retention is a national issue, our staff attrition rate is below local and national averages.
GROWTH AND SUSTAINABILITY
We want to have stewardship of a trust which is sustainable in the long run – parents want their children educated here, and so pupil roll is filled, we’re financially solvent, and we’re able to maintain the staffing commensurate with our pupil roll.
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We want to develop a trust which performs well and is seen in the system as a ‘capacity giver’, not a ‘capacity taker'. This means we will be a trust which those who commission school pupil places, school expansions, and school sponsorships, have faith in. This is important not because we want to expand for the sake of it, or because we have ambitions to be a school of any specific size, but because in a future where trusts will grow and merge, we want to be in control over our destiny.
A TRUST WHERE
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We are respected and trusted by those in the system (local authorities and the DfE) who are in a position to authorise the trust to expand or evolve our offer.
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We have a good reputation with other local schools.
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We have the ambition to contribute to the system locally, through NLE/SLE support, or through the development of trainee teachers in SCITTs, as well as through other formal and informal structures.
CAPITAL EXPENDITURE: ICT AND ESTATES
We want to have stewardship of a trust which acquires new depreciable assets for sound educational reasons. Historically, schools in this trust have allowed a specific ICT provider to influence our approach to both teaching and learning, and to major capital expenditure, which has left us with a culture, pedagogical approach, and an expensive suite of ICT assets, which we have been working to change. We want our trust’s future approach to be governed by a strategic approach to ICT.
We scrutinise the educational reasons for refreshing our ICT estate when it depreciates.
Our acquisition of non-ICT assets is driven by our curriculum and educational objectives, not the other way around
SAFEGUARDING
Everything we do is underpinned by an exceptional approach to keeping children safe in education.