Join our Trust - Schools

Reasons to join Symphony Learning Trust

When choosing a Multi Academy Trust, a school will want one with a proven track record in school improvement and one that demonstrates a clear commitment to making a difference to children’s lives.
We believe that the team in Symphony Learning Trust have the skill-set to work collaboratively with leaders at your school to ensure the best possible educational offer is made to your children.

Symphony has a proven record of:

• Accelerated academic school improvement;
• Bespoke provision in response to the educational and social context any school;
• Successful collaboration with other schools and agencies;
• Well thought out training through Symphony Teaching School, career opportunities and promotion opportunities for our staff;
• Experienced and successful school leadership support, in our Executive and School Improvement teams.
• Excellent business support through our Executive Business team.

We will guarantee a commitment to children’s learning and well-being, set in a culture of relentless determination to make a difference to young people’s lives. However, we also strongly believe that every school should have its own identify in terms of curriculum, timetable, uniform etc. Each of the seven schools present in the Trust serve very different communities and we do not want to impose a ‘one-size-fits –all’ brand in our Trust. The Trust will provide the ‘Trunk’ in terms of business, HR, school support, monitoring and improvement. School leaders and local governors are given the room to retain and grow the ‘branches and leaves’ to provide their own bespoke educational offer for the children at their school.

From a school business prospective, the economies of scale and collective purchasing made possible within the Trust can help schools cope better with shrinking budgets. At a local level, School leaders and Local Governing Bodies still decide how they spend their own budget. Schools are not charged with a general ‘top slice’ but instead are charged individually for stated services, such as insurance, H.R and legal services.  This charge would include a small contribution to allow the MAT to operate, however, all costs are transparent and we would hope that most schools would see a net financial gain with this arrangement.

Growth plans for the Trust

Our current plans to grow the Trust are focused on finding schools which have similar values and principles to us, regardless of Ofsted category. We believe that schools joining would reap many benefits from the shared collaboration, which will provide many cost savings to a school, and would also enhance the capacity of Symphony. The Trust has no ambitions to become a large, national chain, but wants to continue to offer a personal and bespoke service for schools in the East Midlands region. We also want every school’s views to be heard in terms of how we run the Trust; our aim of increasing the size of the Trust to twelve, with a maximum of twenty school, in the next three to five years, will ensure we maximize cost efficiencies but retain a local context where each school has a voice in the Trust.
Trustees and the Executive team are committed to improve systems and performance so that all the schools within the MAT are on a journey to ‘Outstanding’, not only in terms of their Ofsted judgement, but in the eyes of the learners and the community they serve.  We want to add real value to the education of pupils and your community by constantly working to become even more effective, achieving the very best for all young people. We believe in true collaboration, working in partnership, investing in people and building capacity for long term, sustainable success.

If you want to have an initial discussion about what Symphony can offer your school, please do not hesitate in contacting the C.E.O via email:- ceo@symphonylearning trust.co.uk