driving primary collaboration

Strong and effective collaboration amongst schools is more important than ever. A survey conducted by Ipsos Mori for Browne Jacobson LLP found that there is lots of interest in collaboration through academy groups but many respondents identified the need for additional support to develop groups.

The DfE has recently  announced that primary schools may qualify for a £25,000 grant when converting to academy status as part of a chain. To qualify, the group must use either the multi- academy trust or umbrella trust model, consist of 3 or more primary schools and at least one of those schools must be performing well.

Whilst this grant will undoubtedly help schools unlock some additional capacity, will it be enough to give small primaries the confidence to establish a multi-academy solution?

As the grant will only be available until the end of this year, with the summer break looming schools will want to quickly consider whether a collaborative academy could help their learning community.

Strong and effective collaboration amongst schools is more important than ever. Whilst many primary schools are interested in working together it can be difficult to build capacity or find the funding necessary to justify a formal collaborative structure.