Message from the Chair, Andy Field
This multi-academy trust was established in September 2013 at the request of Surrey County Council and the Department for Education to improve educational standards at Jubilee High School, a mixed comprehensive secondary school in Addlestone, Surrey. This partnership has been extremely successful with the school being graded as good in all areas by Ofsted in July 2015.
Since the establishment of the Bourne Education Trust, many further schools have joined the Trust. We are very proud that all schools have either improved or maintained their Ofsted grading since joining the Trust.
The Trust aims to enable schools from any phase to secure their future as academies. Greater autonomy for schools should not, in our view, mean greater isolation. As the educational landscape is changing at an unprecedented pace, leading in particular to a marked reduction in the role and capacity of local authorities, the Trust aims to provide a supportive and collaborative context in which our schools can continue to thrive into the future.
That support takes many forms. Schools are first and foremost for education, so it is right that at the heart of what we do is a focus on school improvement, staff development, and enabling our young people to excel. We support schools in meeting the challenges of rising expectations through mutually supportive intervention and training. Secondly, the Trust works to support each school in ensuring that it has secure and robust financial and resource management, so that schools meet their statutory responsibilities. And thirdly, we support schools in the nurturing of the distinctive ethos which contributes so powerfully to the development of our pupils as rounded and balanced young people poised to make a contribution to society.
The ethos of the Trust is collaborative and participative. Every individual school has a voice, though the Trust’s open and transparent governance, in the key decisions which affect each school. Moreover, the Trust aims to value the healthy diversity which exists in our schools, and we actively encourage each school which decides to join the Trust to maintain and further develop its own distinctive culture and identity.
I hope that the pages which follow give you a clearer idea of the way in which the Trust puts these objectives into practice.
