Shaping education policy and leading thinking
We are the national voice for school trusts and help shape the education policy agenda and lead the thinking about school trusts and a trust-led landscape.
Our membership brings together trusts from every
region and of every size. We work to improve the education system in England for the benefit of children and young people through strategic engagement with government, parliamentarians, regulators and policy makers. We work across political
parties to shape and influence policy.
This work includes:
- Representing our members and the wider education sector on government advisory groups, including the schools strategy and delivery advisory group; the academies regulation and commissioning review advisory group; the attendance alliance group; the SEND review steering group; the academies finance and assurance steering group; and the multi-academy trust leadership development offer expert advisory group
- Contributing to policy reviews and consultations on topics across the sector, including on funding, safeguarding, assessment and behaviour
- Publishing leading strategy and thought leadership papers, including our influential discussion paper What is a Strong Trust?; the agenda-setting SEND paper A good life: towards greater dignity for people with learning disability; and our discussion paper on qualifications and assessment, Coherence and systemness: The future of assessment and qualifications
- Conducting and reviewing evidence-based research to inform the thinking of policy makers and trust leaders, including Professor Muis' literature review on trust quality; and Tim Oates' work on interconnected principles as a framework for discussion around education reform based on Cambridge Assessment’s global experience
- Providing practical and pragmatic guidance and consultancy to schools and trusts, including factual information for maintained schools considering joining a trust; setting out the core responsibilities of trust chief executives; advice on trust growth on school improvement at scale, professional development and integrating practices as trusts grow
- Making the case that governing a school trust is
fundamentally different from governing a maintained school, with comprehensive work on the theory and practicalities of governance, including a landmark overview of governing a school trust and our assurance framework for trust governance.
How we decide policy
Our aim is for our policy making to be as inclusive as possible of our broad membership, representing the diversity of school trusts.
Unlike more traditional associations, we do not have a policy-making body that is directly elected; instead, we have an open and agile approach that seeks to be iterative, evidence-based and broadly influenced. We seek to follow the principles of open policy making and design.
We are strictly apolitical. We work with the government of the day, political parties and politicians across the spectrum to advance education for public benefit. We take care to comply with our duties under charity law:
- Our policy influence and campaigning will only be undertaken in the context of supporting our charitable purposes
- We will always ensure that any involvement with political parties is balanced
- We do not usually campaign but rather seek to influence - but when considering campaigning we will always weigh up the possible benefits against the costs and risks, and ensure any campaign is in line with our charitable purposes.
Our principles
- Listening to new ideas and engaging our members to give us new insights and help us see problems from different points of view.
- Understanding the needs of our members: we believe this will help us to develop policy that works for the people it impacts.
- Gathering evidence, information, and a broad range of views: we believe it is important to be humble about what we know, and what we don’t (yet) know. We are not the only "expert’’ and that we do not have a monopoly on good ideas and policy development.
- Working with experts and engaging with new knowledge: we believe experts and academics can help us to better understand a policy problem, review possible solutions, and challenge assumptions.
- Testing as we go along: testing and iterating policy solutions means they are more likely to work in practice, leading to better outcomes for children and young people.
Approaches to open policy making
We use a number of techniques and approaches to help engage and reflect our members in policy making, including:
- Fortnightly open online member meetings to discuss topical issues, test thinking, and inform policy ideas in real time
- Agile seminars with our members and partner organisations to address evolving issues
- Rapid surveys and research to understand members’ views and experience on specific aspects of policy, for example on public examinations in the pandemic or finance
- Small advisory expert groups, drawing on the expertise of members and our platinum partners, to look at specific aspects of policy
- Discussion papers to help us test policy and concepts for further development
- Commissioning academic work and literature reviews to look at existing evidence and sector thinking
- Theory building that provides a framework for analysis, helps build understanding, and aids delivery of practical solutions to real-world problems in education, such as papers on knowledge building, communities of improvement and professional development in school trusts.
We are always keen to hear from our members and our wider community about ideas for improving our policymaking - please do get in touch media@cstuk.org.uk if you would like to learn more or contribute.
