Our Offer
Doing what counts: Measuring what matters
Introduction
Slough and East Berkshire Church of England Multi-Academy Trust (SEBMAT) has been established to form a group of schools which can support each other to ensure the best possible outcomes for the young people in Slough and the nearby areas. This group of schools includes primary and secondary schools and has a Christian ethos. This does not prevent non-Church of England schools joining the Trust as we enshrine a wide values base. SEBMAT will support schools to excel through coaching, sharing good practice and helping to secure good value for money. Slough and Eton Church of England Business and Enterprise College, Colnbrook Church of England Primary and Eton Porny Church of England First School were the first three schools in SEBMAT. Lynch Hill Enterprise Academy and Lynch Hill School Primary Academy joined the Trust on the 1 January 2019. Most recently we welcomed Woodlands Park Primary School in Maidenhead to the Trust as of 1 November 2022 and Grove Academy on 1 September 2023.
SEBMAT aims to provide:
- Strong and effective strategic leadership and management focused on ensuring positive impact which improves children and young people’s outcome
- An unrelenting emphasis on driving school improvement and extending educational achievement. This involves a collegiate approach to competencies, understanding and sharing knowledge
- Support in implementing creative solutions and curriculum innovation
- Standards monitoring and intelligent data analysis
- Links to local, national and international groups which promote excellence
- Facilitated school-to-school networks, co-ordinating and brokering expertise
- Excellent financial management and value for money
- Excellent support for schools’ infra-structure through shared services
- A very real and positive impact on our local communities
Strategic Leadership
The Trust provides a wide range of experienced and expert strategic leadership. This involves support and challenge through its Members, Directors, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and specialist teams covering finance, human resources (HR), buildings and assets, information and communications technology (ICT) and governance. This includes the CEO’s focus on strengthening the Trust through proportionate growth. Directors provide support and challenge for the local governing bodies (LGB) and headteachers with the emphasis on developing the effectiveness and quality of schools and raising educational achievement for all pupils. This is complemented by the headteachers working closely together through strong and constructive partnership facilitated by the Director of Secondary and Director of Primary.
School Improvement
The emphasis for school improvement is around individual schools developing their school improvement independently and through school-to-school support across the partnership. The Trust has a role to play in facilitating the headteachers working together to address areas for improvement and to consider creatively those issues which will be dealt with jointly and those elements specific to particular schools. Approaches, structures, staff deployment, funding and training are then addressed to facilitate these improvements. The Director of Secondary and Director of Primary oversee this function.
This includes:
- Deployment of staff from across the Trust to support achievement
- Offering strategic advice through support and challenge
- Supporting the headteachers in undertaking high quality self-evaluation, developing and revising the school development plan, professional development programmes, alignment of performance management to school priorities and setting school targets
- Commissioning of annual desk top analysis, reviews and audits e.g. SEND and safeguarding as necessary
- Brokering support for action plans as necessary
- Liaison with external bodies, such as local authorities, Oxford Diocese, the Regional Schools Commissioner (RSC) and the Department for Education (DfE)
- Establishing and strengthening Ofsted-ready practices, including securing a robust evidence base for pupil progress and school improvement
- Undertaking pre-OFSTED assessments to help identify areas for improvement
- Brokering support from the national network of expertise
- Providing support, advice and challenge in strengthening the quality and effectiveness in the delivery of support for pupils with special educational needs
- Access to the Trust's Home-School Link Worker*
- Linking and networking with other organisations to facilitate and support learning partnerships and leadership opportunities
- Support to develop professional development programmes for all staff and governors
Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Development
- Maintaining and implementing the ICT Lifecycle Plan
- ICT development and associated procurement
- Responsive technical support
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) support – including access to the Trust’s Data Protection Officer (DPO) Service *
Finance
- Strategic financial planning
- Budget monitoring
- Group-wide financial accounting system to enable schools to input and access data on a common platform *
- Treasury and cash flow planning
- Day-to-day transactional finance support
- Advice and emergency assistance
- Making appropriate arrangements for financial assurance
- Supporting the annual budget process and ensuring submission to the Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) within deadlines
- Setting group-wide financial policies, where they go beyond the ESFA handbook
- External audit of the Academy Trust, including the accounts for all academies
- Payroll service *
Human Resources (HR)
- Quality-assured operational HR consultancy support *
- Providing policies and procedures and advice about best practice across SEBMAT
- Assistance with administration of Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) requirements *
- Strategic HR advice, including re-structuring and succession planning
- Commissioning of legal representation for Employment Tribunal cases *
Governance
- Professional clerking service that provides advice to the governing body on governance, constitutional and procedural matters
- Effective administrative support to the governing body in accordance with legal requirements
- Ensuring that the local governing body (LGB) is focused on supporting school improvement priorities through monitoring capacity and effectiveness
- Support for strategic management issues, including admissions, local authority (LA) liaison and issues resolution
- Support in appointing governors to LGB's to establish and develop the body and achieve emergency turnaround (as necessary)
- Access to governor development *
Property and Assets
- Conducting an annual audit of:
- Health and safety (H&S) *
- Asbestos management
- Premises *
- Site survey conducted every 2 years with projected asset strategy
- Support and guidance arising from accidents reported by schools, including managing the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations (RIDDOR) process on behalf of the school
- Support in devising and implementing strategic premises plans
- Professional and technical project management for capital works *
- Access to an approved panel of contractors for delivery of small works
- Legionella testing and water hygiene plan *
- Annual review of the school fire risk assessment and evacuation plans *
- Energy advice and management
- Tender and project management for buildings and other assets
- Asset management support *
Items marked with * are provided at an additional cost.