After a great deal of thinking, Create's Trustees feel this is an exciting proposition for our school.
Key considerations:
The Board of Trustees has considered several reasons for looking at this course of action. This has included:
- Our desire to improve capacity (leadership, school improvement, central services)
- Our belief that we can benefit from engaging with secondaries, and that they can benefit from our experiences of supporting students.
- Our expectation that we can achieve financial efficiencies from economies of scale - and do more with the funding that we do have
- Our commitment to doing more for our staff - and ensuring they have access to the best possible training and support
- With declining birth rates and increasing outposts, financial resilience is an important consideration
In short, in the ever changing and fluctuating world of education, we want to create a more sustainable trust for the long term
What happens if we do merge?
Alongside the sharing of ideas and best practice, the structural changes are:
- Governance changes: SJBF becomes the “receiving” trust and CLT will no longer exist as an entity.
- Transfer of schools: CLT academies legally transfer into the SJBF.
- 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 new trust.
What stage are we at now?
When two trusts begin informal discussions about merging they go through a process called due diligence. During this stage everyone looks through all aspects of the other Trust. They explore:
- Vision and values
- Geographical fit
- School improvement needs
- Financial health
- Central team structure
If it looks promising, each trust’s board agrees to then formalise their intention to merge. We have not yet reached that stage.
MAT mergers in England require approval from the Department for Education (DfE).
After a merger, all schools become part of one unified trust with a single board of trustees, one central team, and a shared vision, policies, and operational structure.
