After a great deal of thinking and discussion, it has been agreed that now is the right time for us to look to join a Catholic academy trust.
Key considerations:
There are several reasons for looking at this course of action. This has included:
- Our ambition to provide even greater opportunities for pupils to flourish academically, socially, and personally.
- A continued commitment to our Catholic ethos, identity, and values.
- The opportunity to improve capacity (leadership, school improvement and central services) to provide the very best for our communities.
- Our desire to do more for our staff - enhancing professional development and career progression for all staff.
- Our expectation that we can achieve financial efficiencies from economies of scale - and do more with the funding that we do have.
- With declining birth rates and increasing outcosts, financial resilience is an important consideration.
In short, in the ever changing and fluctuating world of education, we want to be part of a strong trust, strengthening the stability of our school for the long term. We also feel that, given that all Catholic schools in the Diocese will be part of a Trust, we should move first so that we can help greater opportunity to support and benefit from that Trust's offer.
the move for all schools to be part of school trusts
The Department for Education
The Department for Education
The Department for Education
The recent Education White Paper by the government says that:
"We will put collaboration at the heart of the system by moving to all schools joining or forming high-quality school trusts."
The Archdiocese of Liverpool
The Department for Education
The Department for Education
The Archdiocese of Liverpool is moving forward with its strategy to set up three Catholic Multi Academy Trusts so that every school has a named allocated CMAT to join at the appropriate time.
What happens if we do merge?
Alongside the sharing of ideas and best practice, the structural changes are:
- Governance changes: Pope Francis becomes the “receiving” trust and OLQP will transfer into Pope Francis.
- TUPE of staff: Staff are transferred under the Transfer of Employment (Protection of Employment), which ensures employees’ rights are protected when they transfer to a new organisation.
- Financial consolidation: Budgets, assets, liabilities, and central services are combined into one organisation.
- Harmonising systems: Policies, IT systems, safeguarding procedures, and curriculum approaches are aligned across the Trust.
- Greater access to funding to improve our buildings.
As important as it is to talk about what will change, it is also important to reflect on what will stay the same. This will include:
- Our school's identity, uniform and ethos will not change
- The school's curriculum will only change if we feel it is right to do so
- There will still be a governing body, albeit with a slightly different remit
- Things like our behaviour policies etc will stay the same, although with some tweaks of contact details etc.