How to Build an Infrastructure That Facilities Your Trust’s Growth
The strength of any building is determined by its structure, and when it comes to multi-academy trusts, it is no different. As your trust grows, and your portfolio of schools multiplies, it places significant strain on your operational procedures. To avoid disaster, you must have an infrastructure in place that scales with and facilitates your trust’s growth.
What does the infrastructure of a multi-academy trust look like, though, and how must it be constructed to truly become scalable? In this blog, we identify three key areas that must be secure in order to make any expansion a success.
Detailed Policies and Procedures
The backbone of any organisational infrastructure is a set of policies and standard operating procedures (SOPs). These documents outline the processes that any member of your trust — its schools, teachers, staff, and governors — must abide by.
The organisation and structure provided by policies and SOPs is invaluable for large trusts, and without comprehensive, detailed documentation that governs the behaviour, actions, and processes of your trust, it is almost impossible to maintain control and unite so many schools.
Policies and SOPs can pertain to many different areas of school operation, and while each school should have its own policies for issues such as anti-bullying, safeguarding, and term-time absence, your trust should govern more overarching concerns. We recommend having the following trust-wide documentation:
- Advertising Policy & SOPs
- Communications Policy & SOPs
- GDPR Policy & SOPs
- Onboarding Policy & SOPs
- Public Relations Policy & SOPs
- Social Media Policy & SOPs
- Website Cookie Policy
- Website Privacy Policy
With the right documentation in place, your procedures can be immediately implemented at any school that joins your trust, ensuring a uniform approach to all important matters. If you would like a sample of a trust-wide policy, send us a message.
Controlling Communication Platforms
In recent years, communication between parents and schools has evolved. The use of digital mediums, such as email and social media, have made targeted and instant communication possible for every school. While this is good news for both parties, it is a complication for trusts; they now find it much more difficult to oversee communications sent by their schools and distribute their own messages.
The solution for trusts lies in the same realm as the problem — technological advances. A variety of programs can be used by trusts to manage the digital communication platforms their schools now need to use.
For emails, a platform such as Mailchimp offers an effective solution. This program allows mailing lists to be created for each school, meaning the trust can send emails to targeted audiences regarding school-specific issues. Mailchimp also allows you to send emails from specific addresses and with customisable names, so recipients receive messages from a trusted address.
For social media channels, Hootsuite is a popular management tool. Through your trust’s centralised account, you can connect each of your school’s social media profiles and retain the ability to control their communications. This includes drafting, sending, and removing posts; responding to direct messages; and sharing other content.
A Repeatable Onboarding Process
The transition of schools between trusts, or when joining a trust for the first time, can be troublesome, causing problems for both organisations. However, the procedure can be made a lot smoother with the implementation of a step-by-step onboarding process. Earlier, we recommended producing an onboarding policy and SOPs document for your trust. This will be your guide to welcoming a new school into the trust and ensuring that every aspect of the transition is covered.
There are many important things to cover during the transitional period, not least the implementation of your trust’s policies and SOPs. Enforcing the procedures around many important issues will ensure the school follows your operational expectations and becomes ingrained in the trust. Other areas that require consideration include:
- Communications surrounding the school joining the trust.
- Welcome packs providing staff with details about their employment within the trust.
- Updating the branding of the school to match your trust’s brand guidelines.
- The control and management of the school’s website and social media channels.
- Capturing updated photography for both marketing and internal identification purposes.
Having a routine onboarding process makes welcoming a new school into the trust a more seamless and enjoyable experience for you and the school. In turn, this positive first impression will create a sense of optimism within the new school and boost the morale of staff who may have previously been apprehensive about the transition.
Upgrade Your Infrastructure
Multi-academy trusts become stronger as they grow, and the addition of more schools enhances the trust’s reputation, increases interest from other schools, and empowers the organisation to improve standards of education. A strong and scalable infrastructure will help your trust to expand and deliver better outcomes for children and young people.
However, the process of enhancing and strengthening a multi-academy trust’s infrastructure is complex and time consuming. If you want more advice on building a scalable infrastructure, contact the team at Eduprise.
