As the academy trusts system enters its 25th year, it is timely to use Forum Strategy’s long-standing 7 Pillars of School Improvement at Scale (Pain, 2019) to capture how academy trusts are effectively delivering their core business – that of secure, sustained school improvement at scale. This model challenges trust leaders to think beyond the required accountability and regulatory measures – never ignoring them, but ensuring we go further than those often rather narrow, short-term metrics used when assessing our school improvement impact.
The 7 pillars of improvement at scale are:
- Vision for quality improvement
Capacity - Collective Commitment
- Robust and real-time data
- Robust processes and project management
- Disciplined innovation and cutting-edge practice
- Quality assurance
In this improvement at scale series, we are case studying three trusts using the pillars as a framework. In this first case study, we consider the model in use at King’s Group Academies, which is a cross-phase, growing multi academy trust of 15 schools based in Berkshire, East Sussex and Hampshire. KGA’s mission is simple: ‘Opportunity and Success on a Global Stage’. In delivering this, it is intended that KGA’s pupils will become equipped with the confidence, knowledge, skills and values that will enable them to thrive in a global society. It’s a compelling ambition at the very heart of the trust’s improvement model. Recent, significant growth for KGA has necessitated a tight focus on further codifying ‘how we do school improvement’ for new pupils, governors and colleagues.
