CST Policy Papers

Safeguarding at scale

Safeguarding will always be an issue of critical importance in education. From boards, through trust leaders, Designated Safeguarding Leads, and on to all frontline staff, everyone has a role to play. We all need to be clear on its importance, and to recognise the growing complexity of safeguarding issues and the pressures that can come with attempting to deliver excellence in safeguarding without a considered, strategic approach.
Updated January 2024.

The aim of this framework is to identify trusts' most significant areas of strength and challenge, so that they can build organisational capacity. It is diagnostic, not evaluative, or judgemental.
The framework is supported by Ambition Institute, Challenge Partners, Evidence Based Education, the National Institute of Teaching, and ImpactEd.
Updated September 2024.

In February 2022, CST published an influential discussion paper asking the question, ‘What is a strong trust?’ Since then, we have engaged in a sector-wide discussion to understand how our proposed domains of organisational strength and resilience aligned with sector thinking and the emerging evidence base. This paper sets out our current policy position.

In this pamphlet, CST chief executive Leora Cruddas CBE sets out the case for the school trust, and a trust-based system. It attempts to set out why a trust-based system might be our best bet, and explains why a group of schools working together in a school trust is so much more than simply the changing of the legal structure of the school.

Following the Chancellor's Autumn Statement, CST's Trust and School Funding Policy Specialist, Susan Fielden, reflects on what we learnt from the statement - and poses seven areas of interest for the sector to consider.

Following analysis of Budget Forecast Return submissions, shared by over 70 Trusts representing more than 700 schools, we have produced an infographic highlighting the scale of economic challenge facing the sector.

The paper explores ways in which the outcome of the SEND Review and Green Paper consultation could shift the way society thinks about people with learning disability by avoiding deficit language, that suggests people with learning disability are somehow incomplete or worth less, and makes the case for a more ambitious vision of what a good life is - placing greater value on difference, common values, the process of learning and more, to provide a healthy balance to meritocratic values of academics, occupation, and wealth.

As we move towards a school system in which all schools are part of a trust, it is right that trusts and schools joining them consider the benefits and challenges of integrating groups of schools. Much of this is addressed through the vitally important due diligence processes that Trusts and schools undertake. However, this paper extends the essence of due diligence beyond the legal and business undertaking to consider what it means to integrate professional practices.

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