Trust Schools: Reasons To Be A Trust Partner

There is quite a lot of press coverage and comment about the possible advantages to a school becoming a Trust School. These are many and varied and range from an increased autonomy and formalising business partnerships to a way of formalising group procurement and best practice arrangements between groups of schools. The school/s creates its/their vision and identifies the best possible partners to achieve the vision objectives.

Having identified the partners and the advantages of each one to the school, what is the advantage for each partner? It is probably fair to say that just as the criteria is different for each Trust School, the same is likely to be the case for each trust partner. Some partnerings are obvious, the ‘they were made for each other’ scenario. A school’s specialism might point the way – a youth drama charity based at and partnering a specialist performance arts school provides a symbiotic relationship that has obvious and immediate merit. Whilst the school gains on-site expertise and resource, the youth drama charity gains on-site recruits, participants and audience. An easy win-win situation. The benefits are also clear where the partner is educationally motivated. The National Education Trust, dedicated to improving the quality of educational provision is clearly going to be keen to partner its client base. Other educational institutions such as Further Education Colleges or Universities will be looking to their future intake and have the opportunity to influence or encourage the students to give them the best chance of success, thereby reflecting well on both the school and the institution.

The position potentially becomes less obvious when a partner is purely business based. What is in it for a big corporate entity or a small business with limited resources? There is no single answer. Being a trust partner is about embracing the schools vision and becoming committed to it in its entirety, not just picking out the aspect that offers the most direct benefit to the partner in question. Of big name partners, one example is Microsoft who have partnered a school in Northumberland. For them, it would appear that they have the opportunity to work with ICT literate students who will become the future business managers and home users of ICT. They have access to built in market research and product testing. Again, the relationship benefits both parties.

At the other end of the country an organisation like the Eden Project could be a trust partner. They have committed themselves to Cornwall as a county and want to encourage all of us to understand, look after and protect our environment. The way to ensure future success must be through the future users and caretakers; the youngsters of today.

What is clear from successful trust partnerships is that the benefits must be mutual. It is no good if the advantages are all one way. Further, there is nothing wrong with a partner that has an eye to a commercial gain from the arrangement. If a business is offering work experience placements for the benefit of the students it is inevitable that it hopes this will provide some good PR opportunities or introductions to other partners or third parties that might be helpful. A successful school like a successful business will make the best of an opportunity. Students are encouraged to be entrepreneurial and engage in studies that have a high degree of relevance to the real world. Business partners can provide this by offering guidance, opportunities and by example.

It is apparent that any active trust partner will be involved because they believe there is something in it for them and because they believe in what they are doing and the importance of it to the generations to come. It is possible in twenty- first century schools to combine commercial astuteness with altruism to create a beneficial and worthwhile partnership to both parties.

Published 21/09/2009. The author of this article is Julia Green