Community engagement in academy trusts

Recognising that schools are often pivotal hubs in their local communities, some trusts are ensuring that community engagement is a priority.

A recent article in Schools Week reported that Dartmoor Multi Academy Trust, an 18-school trust and Anthem Schools Trust, which has 16 schools across London, the East Midlands and Thames Valley, have recognised their schools’ important place in their communities and talked about how they made community engagement a priority.

It reported that Dartmoor has recently asked its local governors to focus even more on building strong relationships between schools, parents and local communities. Governors seek feedback about their schools and share it at every level within the trust. Wherever possible, the trust and its schools act on it.

Meanwhile, Anthem has changed the remit of its local governors so their priority is to build connections between schools and local businesses, charities and communities. Governors glean insights that are discussed and added to a dashboard, which is visible across the trust and acted upon by the trustees and central team.

The Department for Education is clear that strategic engagement with stakeholders is a key function of a trust, and that doing it well is an indicator of a trust’s quality. Among the multi-academy trust governors and trustees they surveyed, over three-quarters think community engagement should be a key objective in their school or trust improvement plan, yet only 47 per cent of governors and 53 per cent of trustees say it actually is.

Meaningful community engagement can also support many of the areas that governors and trustees say are naturally high on the priority list: quality of education, school improvement, attendance, safeguarding and balancing the budget.