Excalibur Academies Trust is not just about supporting our academies by providing lean and effective back office services. We want our schools to maintain their individual distinctiveness and thrive in a supportive environment.
This is achieved by working in partnership in a culture of trust and openness. We promote honest and transparent dialogue with and between schools, and school-to-school collaboration to ensure schools receive the support they need. The school’s leadership team take responsibility for their school’s educational performance and financial management with comprehensive support from the central team.
Schools in our Trust are open and honest about their challenges and embrace a collaborative approach to improvement, taking responsibility for their performance, accepting the support they need and helping and supporting others where they are able to.
At the heart of our vision for education is a self-improving school-led system which has the best evidence-led practice and in which every child is able to fulfil their potential. By facilitating a more lateral approach across our family of academies, by offering more opportunities to innovate and provide higher levels of teaching, we create the conditions which promote system leadership and collaborative activity.
“The thing that was really important to us when we joined Excalibur was the shared values that we have. We both believe in making the world a better place for our staff, our students and the wider community.”
Amanda Bridgewater, Vice Principal, Fairfield High School
“Being part of a MAT brings a number of benefits to schools. The most obvious being the support that they receive with both staffing and resources. However, it has also created opportunities for staff to visit other schools within the Trust to further their careers. The Trust provides a network for everyone, from TAs to governors and this opportunity for conversation with a wider group of schools is extremely beneficial for everyone.”
Lucy Lee, Trustee
“As a Principal I know that this is my school and I have autonomy in decision making. We work collaboratively sharing good practice because we all have something to give and something to learn. The pandemic really highlighted the benefit of being part of a MAT. You weren’t on your own trying to work out how to deal with everything.”
Zoë Garbutt, Principal Burbage Primary School
- We understand that without developing its organisational capacity, no school will be able to sustain the continuous improvement efforts that result in pupil attainment. Our focus is therefore on building capacity at the local level to ensure that all of our academies progress as rapidly as possible towards excellence.
- Our approach is about group solutions focused on facilitating relationships between our academies to maximise the potential of purposive collaboration.
- Our approach is about careful diagnosis followed by customisation of strategy to context with consistency and high expectations. It is not about using test results and teacher appraisal to reward or punish teachers and schools. It is not about standardisation or searching for low risk ways to reach learning goals.
Want to chat?
We are always very happy to talk to schools who are interested in joining Excalibur Academies Trust or just want to learn more about us and what we do. We recognise that the decision to join a multi academy trust is a two way process based on honesty, transparency and robust due diligence.
If you’d like to know more about the benefits of being part of a successful and well regarded multi academy trust we would be delighted to talk to you; please complete the form and our Trust lead will contact you.