Connecting: We are more powerful when we go together
There is a saying that if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. Today, I want to reflect on a simple but profound truth: we are more powerful when we go together.
This is why, eight years ago, we established the Confederation of School Trusts.
Many of the colleagues with whom I had those first conversations about creating a collective voice for school trusts are in this hall today. Many of you shared the ambition that schools should not stand alone; that collaboration should not be an aspiration but a principle; and that the future of education would be shaped not by individual institutions competing for advantage in a market economy, but by communities of schools working together for a common purpose: to advance education and improve outcomes for children and young people.
This is our north star.
And it is why we will always advocate for you. Our responsibility is to ensure that every policy we influence and every partnership we build is focused on raising standards, improving outcomes and expanding opportunity.
I am profoundly proud of what we have achieved together.
I am proud of the disruptive, animating spirit of the trust sector that said: we do not accept that lesser outcomes are inevitable in poor communities. We will build a school system that serves all our children. And right now, when things are really hard, we need to reclaim this. Our disruptive edge. We know how to do this.
We know how to improve schools.
We know how to advance education.
We were built to do this. It is our animating purpose.
And I want to make a stronger claim than this. Part of the story of the academy trust movement is the story of the renewal of comprehensive education.
Comprehensive education means that every child, whatever their background and wherever they live, has the right to attend a school in which they can receive an excellent education. Comprehensive education has a long history, and I believe the academy movement is the story of its renewal — the deliberate decision to take responsibility for schools in some of the most economically disadvantaged communities in our country, places where educational failure had too often become entrenched, where generations of children had been poorly served, and where low expectations had sometimes hardened into inevitability.
Trust leaders went into those communities and said: this is not inevitable.
You took responsibility for schools that others had struggled to improve. You built leadership, strengthened teaching, established cultures of aspiration and belonging, and created schools that parents were proud to send their children to, and children were proud to attend. You created the conditions in which schools can improve and sustain excellence.
That matters. Because there is nothing comprehensive about a school system in which the quality of a child’s education is determined by the circumstances of their birth or the postcode in which they grow up.
The comprehensive principle is a mindset, not a type of school. It is the foundational belief that every child, regardless of their background, ability, prior attainment or socioeconomic circumstances, is entitled to an excellent education within a common system of schooling that is inclusive, equitable and committed to the flourishing of all.
At its best, the trust movement has been one of the institutional expressions of that promise: taking collective responsibility for children beyond the boundaries of a single school, refusing to walk away from the places where the work is hardest, and insisting that educational excellence belongs as much to children growing up in our poorest communities as it does to anyone else.
We should be proud of that story. And we should tell it.
That entitlement must also shape our thinking about the curriculum. The government is right to point out that we have not paid enough attention to technical and vocational qualifications. Currently, technical awards at 16 are not underpinned by national standards, they do not have nationally determined content, and they are not regulated in the same way as GCSEs.
I’m very proud of the work being curated by Lauren Meadows from Unity Schools Partnership and Nimish Lad from Creative Education Trust on curriculum leadership in The Big Think – a group of curriculum directors thinking hard about curriculum excellence. Trusts have always led the way on curriculum excellence. We will do so again now, with the same rigour and focus on evidence.
But pride must never become complacency. We must be sufficiently confident in the moral purpose of our movement to acknowledge that we have not always got everything right. No institutional structure, however well designed, can guarantee the quality of leadership, the integrity of governance or the strength of professional practice. Our first loyalty is not to the academy trust as an organisational form. It is to the children and young people in whose interests that form exists.
Perhaps this is the deeper meaning of stewardship: not simply to protect what we have built, but to hold it open to scrutiny, to improvement and, where necessary, to change.
This principle must apply equally to the institutions that hold us to account.
Tomorrow, we will hear from Sir Martyn Oliver. I know he will reflect on the challenges put to Ofsted in recent weeks. I am grateful to Ofsted for the conversations we have been having with them about these challenges.
We believe in independent inspection. Public accountability is essential to the legitimacy of our education system. But accountability must itself be accountable.
Inspection must be proportionate, evidence-informed, attentive to context and worthy of the confidence of the profession.
The question is not whether schools should be accountable. Of course they should. The question is how we create a system of accountability that protects children, strengthens professional practice, supports improvement and commands public and professional confidence.
We must be prepared to examine not only the quality of our schools, but the quality of the institutions and processes through which we judge them.
I know Sir Martyn intends to talk to these challenges tomorrow – and set out steps to improve confidence in inspection. I hope to hear serious answers to these concerns, as well as a commitment to continuing the dialogue with the profession.
The legitimacy of our institutions cannot rest simply upon the conviction that our purposes are good. It must rest upon the evidence that we are doing good.
And today, I am sharing that there is evidence that we are doing good. We can demonstrate impact. As both CST and ImpactEd research has shown through two decades of data, trusts are making a difference: improving outcomes for disadvantaged pupils, developing teachers and leaders, strengthening school improvement, creating professional opportunities, and ensuring that successful practice is shared more widely.
This is why a Labour government created the trust movement. It is why a Coalition government of the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties created the 2010 Academies Act, why successive Conservative governments pursued the policy and why a Labour government’s Schools White Paper seven months ago said every school should be part of a strong trust. It is the recognition across political parties that trusts are not the privatisation of education, but groups of schools working together in deep and purposeful collaboration to advance education.
So, colleagues, let’s just get on with the business of building the education system in England that is our best bet for getting better.
Connection
But perhaps even more important than what we have built is how we have built it. The story of CST and the story of the trusts we represent, is at its heart, a story of connection.
In a world that often celebrates the individual, it is easy to forget that every meaningful achievement is rooted in relationship. None of us arrives at our destination alone.
We are shaped by our families, strengthened by our colleagues and our collective knowledge about education, and supported by those who believe in us when we struggle to believe in ourselves.
Every school improvement journey.
Every act of leadership.
Every moment when a child discovers their potential.
Every time a professional shares their expertise with another.
Everytime a school opens its doors and says, “we can help.”
This is an expression of the same truth, our truth: we build together; we flourish together.
Connection is not a soft idea. It is not something that sits alongside the serious business of leadership, improvement and governance.
Connection is the foundation upon which all those things are built. It is the infrastructure of professionalism: the basis of our capacity to exercise independent judgment rooted in expertise, ethical standards and responsibility.
In a trust, this takes institutional form:
A shared endeavour.
A community of professionals with shared knowledge and professional codes and ethics.
A collective responsibility for children and communities.
A civic institution anchored in place.
These relationships create new possibilities for improvement, partnership and solidarity. But their value depends on who is included, and who benefits.
Colleagues, we know that sometimes, networks can be exclusionary. Strong institutional relationships can protect vested interests. So, connection must be accompanied by justice, reciprocity and the willingness to redistribute opportunity.
Relationships
Sir David Robinson, through the Relationships Project, has helped us understand that relationships are not the consequence of successful organisations. They are the cause.
But this insight also asks us to reconsider the way we design our institutions.
Hilary Cottam, who I am delighted we will hear from tomorrow, challenges us to imagine a different model of public service: one that moves away from transactional relationships towards relational ones.
The transactional model begins with a service being delivered. It asks: what does the institution provide? What process must be followed? What outcome must be measured?
These questions matter. Public institutions need accountability, effectiveness and stewardship.
But human beings are not transactions. Children are not data points. Families are not cases. Communities are not problems to be managed.
School trusts have a unique opportunity to create institutions that combine the discipline and capacity of a strong organisation with the humanity and connection of a strong community.
The future trust is not merely a more efficient organisation. It is a more relational institution. Truly civic, anchored in community and connection.
In the context of the Milburn review, the findings of the Inquiry into White Working-Class Educational Outcomes, and the urgent reform of our system of special educational needs, we will revive our animating spirit. We will restore not the social contract, but the promise of education, the social covenant.
The contract remains essential. It gives us accountability, legitimacy and structure.
But covenant gives us something different: relationship, reciprocity and belonging. It sustains the shared moral purpose of education. The social covenant is the promise we make to our young people and our communities - that education is the building of human capacity and the cultivation of human powers.
Keeping that promise also requires us to think about the world our young people will inherit. We will hear today from Daniel Susskind. He invites us to lift our eyes to the future, to consider how our system, our leadership and the work of teaching and learning must develop in the next decade, and to continue thinking about what a great education is.
So, we will hold on to our expertise. To our collective professional knowledge. To what we know to be true about the power of education to change lives. Because as Nelson Mandela said, education is the most powerful weapon we have to change the world.
Leadership
The move from transactional to relational institutions is not only about how we organise services. It is about how we understand leadership itself.
Ultimately, this conference is a space where we can think together about leadership. That is why I am so pleased that John Amaechi will close our conference tomorrow. In The Promises of Giants, John reminds us that leadership is ultimately measured not by the size of our own achievements, but by our willingness to create the conditions in which others can become extraordinary.
A giant in Amaechi’s understanding, is not simply someone who stands taller than others. A giant is someone who enables others to see further, reach higher and believe more deeply in what they are capable of becoming.
The purpose of trust leadership is not to create dependence upon a central organisation. It is to create confidence, capability and courage throughout a community of schools. The best leaders do not gather power around themselves. They distribute possibility.
Bonding: creating belonging within trusts
The language of social capital helps us understand this work.
The first dimension is bonding. Bonding is about belonging. It is the relationships that hold a trust together. A strong trust does not diminish the identity of its schools. It strengthens it. It recognises that every school is a community with its own history, culture and contribution. The role of a trust is not to erase difference. It is to create the conditions in which difference becomes a source of strength.
Bonding social capital is created when leaders support one another, when expertise is shared generously, when teachers learn together and when every school knows that it belongs to something larger than itself.
A trust is not a collection of schools. It is a community of purpose.
Bridging: building relationships beyond ourselves
But bonding alone is not enough. Communities that only strengthen relationships within themselves eventually become weaker beyond themselves. This is also true of school communities.
The second dimension is bridging. Bridging is the work of connection beyond ourselves. Our trusts should be outward facing, collaborative. We should be building relationships beyond our institutional boundaries with other schools and other trusts. And we are now seeing tangible examples of this as trusts make public commitments to working together to solve the problems of place-based school improvement as the trusts working across the city of Plymouth have done. And as the city of Bristol is now doing.
Linking: stewardship and shared civic endeavour
The third dimension is linking: building relationships across differences in power and access to resources, including with local government, health services, employers and universities. It is about stewardship and shared civic endeavour.
Educational inequality, mental health, social disadvantage and the changing world of work demand a shared response from the institutions that serve children.
For much of the past thirty years, educational reform has been organised around institutions. We have debated structures, accountability, governance and standards, all in the interests of children and young people receiving the very best education.
These debates have mattered. They have helped to build stronger schools and, through the emergence of school trusts, stronger institutions capable of sustaining excellence over time. This has led to ever-higher standards, greater opportunities for children, including those from disadvantaged backgrounds, and the transformation of life chances for countless young people.
Another question now presents itself: not simply, ‘How do we build better institutions?’ but ‘How do better institutions further contribute to better places?’
This is the question that sits at the heart of the devolution agenda. It is not principally a constitutional question, nor merely an administrative one. It is instead a moral and civic question. It asks where decisions are best made, how public institutions should relate to one another and, ultimately, how communities become places in which people can flourish.
The rise of strategic authorities and elected mayors represents more than just another layer of government. It represents an invitation to think differently about leadership. Leadership is no longer exercised only vertically through lines of accountability to Whitehall. Increasingly, it must also be exercised horizontally through relationships, partnerships and shared civic endeavour.
Schools and trusts are among the most enduring civic institutions within any community. Their contribution must therefore extend beyond educational performance alone to the wider flourishing of the places they serve.
We are already seeing emerging work here, for example Dixons Academies Trust’s commitment to their schools as member institutions of Bradford, West Yorkshire, Greater Manchester and Liverpool Citizens Alliances with Citizens UK.
Colleagues, you will have heard me say before that civic leadership is not about schools taking responsibility for everything. It is about ensuring that other institutions take their responsibilities towards children seriously.
Educating our children is our core business. We must not wake up in five years’ time and realise that more of our children can’t read because our attention was elsewhere. Running great schools must remain our core focus.
But schools and trusts can also contribute to wider civic outcomes. The next chapter of educational reform is therefore not only about excellence. It is about excellence in service of place.
Going together
The trust movement has created important new institutional capacities. In the next phase of reform, we must exercise them with humility, professional generosity, democratic sensitivity and an unwavering commitment to the public good.
Perhaps this is the next great opportunity before the trust movement. Not simply to create larger organisations, nor to achieve improvement at scale. But to help reimagine what public institutions can become.
The things that seem impossible when faced alone become achievable when carried by many hands and many hearts.
As the wonderful Harry Baker says in his poem, Impossible:
This world was built
upon impossible,
that has not stopped us yet.
so yes indeed the dos we did
outdo the don’ts we didn’t
So it remains impossible,
until it isn’t.
It may feel like the problems we face, the complexity of the challenges at hand are impossibly hard. But that has not stopped us yet. Colleagues, it only remains impossible until it isn’t.
We are impossible
to everyone
who’s ever gone before
And everyone who’s yet to come
will push impossible some more.
And colleagues, this means that we will not always agree. If we are to push impossible together, it may be important that we don’t.
Indeed, some of the most powerful forms of connection emerge when we listen to different perspectives with curiosity and respect. This is why our three mainstage breakout sessions will invite colleagues to debate big concepts and issues. We must get better at disagreeing respectfully. At pushing impossible some more.
Going together is not about uniformity. It is about unity.
It is about creating space for different voices while remaining committed to a common purpose.
The future will not be built by those who stand apart. It will be shaped by those who stand together. So, the question before us is how we choose to nurture connection.
Will we build bridges where others build barriers? Will we choose collaboration over isolation? Will we invest in relationships that enable people and communities to flourish?
When we do, we find courage in one another — the courage to be more creative, more resilient and more positively disruptive.
And we become more powerful. Not powerful in the sense of authority or control. But powerful in our ability to make a difference. Powerful in our capacity to create change. Powerful in our commitment to a future that is better than the present.
John Amaechi reminds us that every generation needs giants: people and institutions willing to stand tall, not for their own recognition, but so that others can see further.
This is why CST exists. Not simply to represent school trusts. But to connect us together. To help us see further. To create a place where leaders can learn together, challenge one another, support one another and act together in service of children and communities.
Because we are stronger together. Wiser together. And ultimately, more powerful when we go together.
You are my people.
And to borrow the beautiful words of e.e. cummings: “i carry your heart with me (i carry it in my heart).”
Thank you.
