Trusts are also increasingly concerned about financial pressures facing education, with financial sustainability overtaking improving the quality of education as top strategic priority in the Confederation of School Trust’s National School Trust Survey for the first time.
The survey is organised by CST, the sector body and membership organisation for trusts, together with Edurio, leaders in school stakeholder feedback.
More than 400 trust chief executives took part in this year’s survey, which found that:
- Ensuring inclusive education, including for special educational needs, is the top classroom priority for nearly three-quarters of trusts, up from around half in 2023 – but this is being hampered by funding and resources (87%) and problems coordinating with external agencies (57%)
- Schools will also be highly focused on attendance (61%), assessment (40%) and narrowing the attainment gap (40%) this academic year
- Balancing budgets (83%) and cost reduction (73%) are the top financial priorities for trusts – with three-quarters of trusts expecting to dip into their reserves this year
- Trusts face a continuing struggle to recruit staff across their operations, with over 60% reporting difficult recruiting teachers and teaching assistants, and over 40% struggling to find SEND specialists and school support staff
- While the focus on "crumbly concrete” has faded, schools still face failing infrastructure, with two in five trusts saying they have building that are life expired or at imminent risk of failure
- Trusts will be paying close attention to the Government’s upcoming review of the National Curriculum, with 94% saying their teaching is highly or quite influenced by the framework – despite not being legally required to follow it
- School trusts are taking tentative steps in using artificial intelligence, with a third of trusts training staff about it and experimenting with it – though 39% say they haven’t taken any formal steps in response to the new technology
- More than half of trusts would support paid time off work for trustees, with just under a third in favour of paid allowances to help recruit and retain a diverse range of trustees
- Trusts provide a wide range of support across the education sector, with 90% working with schools outside their own trust – including 72% working with maintained schools
- Two thirds of trusts hope to grow in the coming year, with academy conversions (83%) the most likely source of new schools; two in five trusts are exploring merging with another trust
CST Chief Executive Leora Cruddas CBE said: "Education will always be at the core of school trusts - it is fundamentally why we exist - but trust leadership is also about ensuring financial, physical, and strategic leadership so children have the space to flourish. From their outset, trusts have embraced new financial models to put more money to the frontline but recent years’ stretched public spending, and external economic pressures have made balancing the books all the more challenging.
"These results indicate that trust leaders increasingly see the power of a trust to bring schools together to address financial and educational challenges, with most anticipating taking on additional schools. This does not mean the future is only about large national trusts - the average trust size is still less than five schools - and we believe there is scope for a range of different sizes and structures.”
Ernest Jenavs, Co-Founder of Edurio said: "Two major themes emerged from the analysis of this year’s survey. First, the evolution of financial pressures on trusts stands out. While trust CEOs feel their trusts have generally managed to deal with the immediate financial pressures, this has often come at the expense of depleting trust reserves
"The second key observation concerns the growing prominence of SEND issues. In recent years, SEND has surged to the forefront of CEOs' concerns, becoming the top priority within delivering high-quality education.
"Through it all, trust CEOs have demonstrated remarkable resilience and dedication to the sector. We are inspired by their constructive comments and examples of leading through the external challenges.”
This year is the third year the survey has been run, with the full survey report delivering a unique picture of the state of the country’s schools and trusts.
Trust accounting officers – those responsible to Parliament for the running of trusts, usually the trust’s chief executive – were invited to complete an online survey in May and June 2024.
