Following the publication of the Academies Regulatory and Commissioning Review, Leora Cruddas CBE presented an overview of the review at a special member briefing.

Following our recent cost pressures survey, Susan Fielden (CST Trust and School Funding Policy Specialist) shares her analysis of the results and the budgeting assumptions being made by member trusts.

In January 2023 CST published a discussion paper, ‘Navigating uncertainty: a future direction for Ofsted’. We set out some key concepts that inspection must navigate, including autonomy and control, validity and reliability, and inference and consistency. In this paper we build on this initial conceptual framing to offer some policy ideas which might be considered in relation to inspection. Again, these are offered as a stimulus for discussion at this stage rather than being firm CST positions.

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.

This paper is intended to support such discussions by exploring key tensions and trade-offs that exist in inspection policy and practice. We think setting these out is an important first step before moving into the ‘nuts and bolts’ of what a future framework should look like. Too often calls are made for Ofsted to focus on X or to look beyond Y, but the broad paradigm – and the concerns sometimes expressed about inspection - remain the same because the issues outlined in this paper are not always properly understood. We think that exploring these tensions as a starting point creates the space to think truly differently and constructively about the future of inspection.

As part of CST's Bridge to the Future series, written in partnership with the Reach Foundation.

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.

School trusts are facing substantial unplanned and unfunded costs. Analysis of budget information and survey data by CST has found that, without further financial support, more than half of trusts could be in deficit by 2024/5 with the remainder down to worryingly low reserves.

The rights and protection of transgender people are currently contested and rapidly developing areas of law. The analysis this briefing contains is set in the context of recent developments and the wider law, but it does not attempt a full discussion of the law of transgender rights; any such attempt would at present become rapidly out of date as new case law emerges.

CST’s policy position on funding pressures as of September 2022, including action taken over the summer and longer-term work.