Long-running academy trusts have shed the desire to “grow, grow, grow” and are instead “reaching out” to help colleagues, a senior government mandarin has said.
Tim Coulson, the head of the Department for Education’s regional teams, told the Schools and Academies Show on Thursday there was less a sense of growth for a trust’s own sake, but a willingness to reach out and help colleagues.
“We would love to see that sense of a system of professional generosity. Many of you will have both given professional generosity over the years and experienced it.”
Coulson said it was a “time for optimism”.
Pointing to the government’s ambition for all schools to be in a trust, he said academy chains would be “expected” to have “inclusive support”.
There would also be a “greater focus on geographic coherence”.
“For trusts that have 10 years under their belts, I think we’re now beginning to see not a sector where ‘I’ve just got to grow, grow, grow’ but ‘I’ve reached a stage where… I’ve got something to offer the system’.”
Coulson added that over the next few months his teams would be encouraging “conversations” over what geographical coherence “means for the area you live”.
“What would a further development of the school system look like in your area?”
On the government’s SEND reforms, he stressed the changes would usher in a “completely different system in three years’ time”.
But before that the government was “looking to see strong partnerships in every area with much greater resources for local authorities to build experts-at-hand services”.
He acknowledged there would be “challenges within recruitment”, but there was a “tremendous opportunity to really provide hands-on support that people have been longing for for a long time”.
