Our Offer

We want you to feel the difference from the moment you join our Trust. 

Where advice and guidance may be needed, our approachable and proactive team can centrally identify Trust wide training needs and respond appropriately, for example, with the arrangement of quality CPD or the creation, and research of systems to support our school colleagues.

All schools within the Trust have access to the professional experitse and development opportunities offered by our flourishing central team.

Our Trust partners have access to bespoke leadership and professional development opportunities.

Finance and Business Managers will receive support from the Chief Finance Officer, and work together as a group to develop and share practice.

It is expected that all schools in the Trust will use our common financial management system.

Strategic Operations and Central Team Support

The central team at The Sycamore CE Trust operates with a strategic and supportive focus, ensuring that all services remain fit for purpose, deliver the expected quality, and provide increasing value to our schools. A key part of this is the regular review of services and service level agreements (SLAs), identifying opportunities for Trust-wide alignment, cost savings, and enhanced consistency.

Our commitment to the consistent application of high-quality processes ensures both efficacy and excellence across all schools within the Trust. These processes span the operational running of schools, including:

• Budgeting and financial management
• Estate management
• Safeguarding
• HR processes
• Absence reporting.

Consistency in these areas enables Trust-wide support during staff absence, fosters a peer network for collaboration and training, and allows schools to maintain a strong focus on teaching and learning.

What You Can Expect from the Central Team

• Financial Strategy and Oversight
• HR, Recruitment, Payroll, and Pensions
• HR processes and professional advice
• Access to Quality Advising Teachers
• School Improvement Support and Services
• Buildings Advice (including support with CIF bids)
• Legal Advice
• Data Protection Helpline
• Health and Safety Helpline
• Risk Management
• Governance clerking and professional advice
• Branding Resources (logos, website templates, marketing materials)
• SLA Review and Procurement Support — ensuring quality, consistency, value for money, and strategic alignment
• National College CPD access and tailored CPD provision per staff group
• Education Support Services
• Three Roundtable Meetings per year (led by the Trust Leader or Deputy CEO)
• Network Meetings across key areas (SEND, ECT, English, Maths, Science Leaders, Senior Administrators)

Future Growth and Strategic Development

As the Trust grows, so too will the central team, in a phased and sustainable way. This growth will ensure that schools benefit from day one, with further cost savings and improved service delivery. For example, outsourced SLAs that do not meet our standards may be centralised to ensure consistent, high-quality outcomes across the Trust. School feedback matters and is invited, heard and acted upon. 

Our Growth Strategy includes planning for dedicated roles and clear strategic direction in the following areas:

• Governance
• Community and Marketing Strategy
• ICT and Digital Strategy

Anticipated Services Through Trust Growth

As part of our strategic expansion, schools will also gain access to additional services, including:

• Educational Psychologist
• Pastoral and Social Support
• Attendance Officer

Through the Strategic Heads Group and regular liaison with local academy committees, schools within the trust have the opportunity to shape and grow the trust vision.

Our vision for our trust school improvement is clear: Enabling our leaders to take the improvement of our schools into their own hands. Our academies are part of a self-improving partnership of schools. The wider trust will do all it can to ensure that we are enabling and investing in rapid, effective and sustainable school improvement in all our schools. Our school improvement strategy is at the heart of all aspects of our trust’s work; it defines who we are as a trust and its impact measures our effectiveness.

Schools in the trust will access the following support for school improvement:

• Self-evaluation health check including: analysis and evaluation of whole-school approaches to self-evaluation; support for action planning; and identification of impact measures
• Termly data and progress review supported by the Trust Leader and Quality Assurance from an external provider (SEP)
• Impact Team development – leaders and aspirant leaders working across the trust to analyse and identify priorities for school improvement
• Support and training for governors and trustees
• Headteacher Performance Management including review and setting of targets, and monitoring achievement
• Leadership development for staff through the Trust and the Bury Schools Alliance
• Professional development opportunities for all staff through Christ Church CofE Multi-Academy Trust and the Bury Schools Alliance

• We believe that the Trust’s role is to create the climate for possibility, investing in a broad and balanced curriculum and assessment framework and associated professional development that will bring about the best teaching and facilitate the greatest learning.
• The key to learning is an exciting, broad and relevant curriculum that acknowledges that all children are different and need access to a range of experiences; where skilled teaching is about provoking curiosity, engaging interest, encouraging creativity and stimulating learning not just delivery of content. The responsibility for getting this important job done will be devolved to individual academies.

What matters most in teaching, learning and leading:

A precondition for improving our schools is the existence of a culture focused on learning in which all professionals

• Talk about practice
• Share their ‘craft knowledge’ as co-learners and as knowledgeable others
• Conduct learning walks and talk in classrooms on a daily basis
• Support and celebrate each others success unconditionally

Without purposeful culture, no meaningful improvement – no professional learning, no curriculum development, no teacher leadership, no pupil self-assessment, no co-teaching, no parental involvement and no sustainable change is possible.