By Sarah Baker, CEO TEAM Education Trust
We created TEAM Education Trust in 2017 after struggling to find a Trust we aligned to. At Stubbin Wood, we knew that we wanted to be part of a trust that would give us the flexibility to continue our outward facing work with schools around SEND and wider inclusion using our specialised facilities. When we couldn't find a trust that matched our needs, we created our own!
As a leadership team, we have always wanted to add value to the sector: To grow and develop as a school and to locally collaborate and support our talented staff support beyond our setting. It quickly became a discussion of what our students and staff would gain, and how the engagement with our community would really enhance what we had already set up as a single organisation. We then started to seriously look at how trusts were set up and l engaged with Micheal Pain from Forum Strategy. He ran a trust exploration day and from there we started to scope out what our ideal trust would look like. This work coincided with me taking on the NPQEL within cohort one, where my project became setting up TEAM.
Our vision is to provide high quality, inclusive education through a model of collaboration and through a culture of trust, transparency, and togetherness.
After working closely with Whaley Thorns Primary School and Model Village Primary School we all decided to set up TEAM Education Trust.
In 2020, the three schools converted to form TEAM Education Trust, with the lead School being a Special School for 2–19-year olds with a mainstream Nursery over two sites. This was my school at the time - Stubbin Wood. We remain as three converted schools, working with a further seven schools closely. We have also developed and launched a number of satellite provisions from Stubbin Wood and have plans for growth across East Midlands and South Yorkshire and Humber regions.
The last year has seen us refine our educational offer to cover more than just straight conversions and traded Early Help Services. It now operates four offers; the core offer to its converted schools (covering education and school improvement, premise and estates, HR and finance and compliance), a collaborative offer (covering leadership, staff and student career development and subject events), and a wider number of bespoke educational services to schools and Trusts under an Associate Contract which includes a schedule of services and support from the core or support services offer and the chance to become a wider partner of TEAM Education Trust.
The portfolio of support services cover SEND, Behaviour, Early Help, IT and School Improvement, and these are accessed by other schools who, whilst not members of our Trust, are our collaborative partners.
At TEAM we set out to be different: We didn’t wish to empire build and only ever wanted to do what was right for our children and staff. The aim was to add value by sharing our knowledge, understanding and expertise and grow sustainability within regional hubs and by linking with partners already in the system. As a small Trust, l think size doesn’t matter. It’s what you do with your Trust and how it serves its children, staff, parents and community.
The role of the CEO has been one of the best jobs l have ever had. It has enabled me to apply the experience l have gathered from my start as a geography teacher in secondary mainstream, to SENDCo, Trust management and leadership, School Improvement and various supporting and advisory roles at regional and national level, and now l can work to ensure that more and more children have the best starts in life.
I am extremely lucky as a CEO to work with such like-minded colleagues who have brought into our SEND/Inclusion USP, and really do believe that every child matters, not just in terms of their academic ability, but their experiences at school, and how we ensure the children leave us feeling like they can take on anything they choose in the future.
As a leader, l have remained as open and as transparent as l can be with the information l have, along with being approachable and flexible with staff to gain the best for them and for our children. When challenges come before us, l like to come up with elegant solutions in collaboration with my team, whilst always thinking ahead and always going 'all out' for total blue sky approaches, as you have to aim high to gain the most!
More recently, as l have settled into the CEO role fully, l have learnt to give myself time to review the strategy, and have time with the trust, although this is shifting to 65-70% of my time with my Executive Team in order to drive forward growth. However, l like to remain in touch, and spend time in the trust to keep in touch and understand the impact of the strategy on our greatest asset - our people.