North Star Community Trust is a family of four schools, three primary and one secondary, educating around 2,600 children across some of the most disadvantaged communities in North London. The trust serves families from more than 80 ethnic backgrounds, many of whom face significant social and economic challenges.
Today, North Star is one of the highest-performing trusts in the country, with two of its primary schools among the top 2% nationally for SATs outcomes. Alongside these achievements, the trust has developed a nationally recognised approach to community outreach and parental engagement, founded on the belief that improving children’s outcomes begins by working in partnership with families.
In this case study, Rachael Gacs speaks to Marino Charalambous, CEO of North Star Community Trust, and Laura Addae, Head of Community Outreach, about how this belief evolved into a comprehensive parental learning and community outreach offer, empowering parents with the confidence, skills and opportunities to transform outcomes for themselves, their children and their communities.
When Marino Charalambous joined North Star Community Trust as CEO, the trust was facing significant challenges. “The trust was going through a crisis period,” he recalls. “It’d received a financial notice to improve, results were below the national average, staff morale was down; we had many issues.” Determined to improve outcomes and opportunities for children, Marino began researching the characteristics of successful schools; “drawing on all the evidence”, he says, “the common factor that came up time and again was that successful schools prioritised parental engagement”.
“Marino began researching the characteristics of successful schools; “drawing on all the evidence”, he says, “the common factor that came up time and again was that successful schools prioritised parental engagement”.
For Marino, the research resonated particularly strongly, with North Star serving communities facing significant social and economic challenges, where poverty, housing pressures, language barriers and social isolation all make it harder for families to engage with school. “Many parents wanted to support their children”, explains Marino, “but lacked the confidence to engage with school, particularly where English was not their first language or their own experiences of education had been limited, difficult or outside the UK system”.
Convinced that stronger partnerships with families would be key to school improvement, Marino made parental engagement his mission. “We wanted to improve our schools and opportunities for our children, so we needed to find ways to support our parents to get involved.”
