Associate Membership

An opportunity to experience the Trust at work

Schoolsworks Academy Trust was established in 2012 and currently looks after 8 open schools with a free school in pre-opening.  They are all primary or junior schools and located in the Arun, Chichester and Worthing districts of West Sussex.  

Associate Membership, which we first piloted in 2015, is offered to independent academies and maintained schools where there is an interest in exploring what life is like as part of a school trust like ours.  It is designed to enable schools - maintained or academies - to benefit from some intentional peer-to-peer, school-to-school engagement and to experience how life in a multi-academy trust works.  

 What’s involved?

Once a school has entered an agreement to become an Associate Member, their leaders, governors and staff can access a number of Schoolsworks support activities depending on scheduling. These might include: 

Visits to any of our schools to talk to members of staff about life in a multi academy trust

Participation in our Head’s Forum group

This group meets monthly with the aim of sharing good practice, offering mutual support and encouragement and providing alignment for the Trust.  Last year the group:

• Devised a Trust wide support staff appraisal system 
• Drew up a graded work scrutiny monitoring grid
• Shared resources for lesson observations
• Commissioned and implemented a Trust wide ‘assessment without levels’ programme - Insight
• Shared training on understanding the Inspection Dashboards

Your staff members attending any of the range of Curriculum and Interest Groups the Trust runs

These include:

• Schoolsworks Maths Leaders Group – currently supporting schools to deliver the Inspire Maths curriculum
• Schoolsworks English Leaders Group – currently reviewing the most effective strategies for teaching spelling and organising a range of moderation events for a variety of year groups
• Schoolsworks EYFS Team – currently piloting our new Baseline Assessment scheme
• Schoolsworks SEND managers – working together to share expertise in this challenging area
• Deputy Heads Group – who meet to plan and deliver a number of positive development initiatives including a very popular ‘RQT’ INSET day

Taking part in termly support and briefing meetings for Chairs of School Community Councils (local governance groups) in the Trust

These include practical ways of supporting our SCCs to be more effective by training and support in the following areas:

• supporting the school in community engagement and fundraising
• monitoring effective data protection
• managing buildings compliance, health and safety and risk
• effective monitoring or school performance data

Taking part in Trust wide CPD

You can send staff to join Schoolsworks joint staff meetings, held in different of our academy schools, again with a focus on sharing good ideas in across year groups from R to 6.

As we share staff meeting themes across the Trust, you can send staff to join any of the staff training opportunities in any of the schools that might support your own CPD or attend any relevant INSET day CPD.

Gaining an understanding about leadership within the Trust

You and your Chair of Governors are warmly welcome to be observers at one of the meetings of Schoolsworks’ Board of Trustees, or Operational Board or Academic & Welfare Board.  (The Board of Trustees are also the Governing Body of our schools.)

 You and your SBM or bursar can attend one of the termly finance or audit & risk meetings

What will it cost?

We won't charge for our Associate Membership as we see it as a hugely important opportunity to get to know you, and vice versa.

How does my school become an Associate Member of Schoolsworks?

Please contact one of the following to discuss associate membership of Schoolsworks:

Cathy Williams, Schoolsworks Chief Executive Officer

01903 739988 | ceo@schoolsworks.org 

Louise Pope, Schoolsworks Company Secretary and Governance Professional

01903 739988 | louise.pope@schoolsworks.org