Sponsor application form Application to become an academy sponsor This application is for all applicants who wish to apply to become an academy sponsor. Information to help you complete this form can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/sponsor-an-academy Please note that information provided in this application form, including personal information, may be subject to publication or disclosure in accordance with access to information regimes, particularly the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and the Data Protection Act 1998 Part A: Applicant Details Date of application: 1st June 2018 Name of sponsor Tees Valley Collaborative Trust organisation: Company number: 10743632 Applicant contact Joanna Bailey name and role: CEO Full address: Church walk Guisborough TS14 6BU Telephone number: 01287 280800 Email address: [email protected] Are you interested in No ☒ Yes ☐ any current Basic Need Projects? If yes please state which local authority (LA) and project you are interested in: More details of the Basic Need programme and its criteria can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/targeted-basic-need-programme Have you or Please tick all that apply: members of your group ever applied to Free School Studio School UTC X Sponsor set up a free school, studio school, UTC or become a sponsor? 2 If yes, please provide the following: Name of school(s) or organisation: Winstanley College, Wigan to sponsor Abraham Guest School, Orrell Date of application: January 2011 Please describe the involvement of your group or group’s members in the application? CEO and Principal Joanna Bailey was Principal of Winstanley College at the time. Winstanley was already supporting the school through National Challenge and was asked by the DfE to sponsor the school as an academy. JB left Winstanley College in 2013. Director of Resources – Lyle Nicholson – was Vice Principal at Discovery School (Free School) in Newcastle upon Tyne and as such was part of the pre-opening team. He helped lead the school through the successful process of application, monitoring and eventual opening in September 2014. Do you have any plans to apply for to set up a free school, studio school or UTC in the future? Not in the short term. 3 How would you Please tick all that apply: describe your organisation? Primary Special School All through (primary Alternative Provision School and Secondary) Independent Business Voluntary Group Diocese school Group Existing UTC Existing Studio FE College Grammar School Proposer School Proposer TSA Philanthropist Faith Based University Organisation Parent Secondary Residential X 6th Form College Community School Provision Group Free School Other (Please specify) If you are a school Has your governing body ratified its support for you becoming an academy sponsor: Yes please provide further information: If you are supported by a Church Diocese, have you received formal support to become an academy sponsor? (If relevant): Yes / No Type of Please tick all that apply: academy/academies you plan to sponsor: X Primary Special School All through Alternative Provision School (primary and Secondary) X Secondary Residential Other (Please School Provision specify) 4 Geographical area(s) Please tick all that apply: where you wish to work: Lancashire and North East London East Midlands and South London West Yorkshire and East Humber and South East North West X North West Midlands South West London and South Central National If you have specific LAs in mind, please provide further information: Our 16-19 academy has two sites, one in Redcar and Cleveland and one in Stockton on Tees. Initially, for reasons of geographical proximity and knowledge of local networks, we would hope to work in these areas. However, we would be open to work across a wider area, within and beyond the Tees Valley, where there may be a need. 5 Part B: Applicant overview This section is about the strategic vision of your organisation, and your aspirations for growth. All other parts of the application should support this vision. (Recommended max 500 words) An Academy Sponsor works to support an under-performing academy to improve its performance and ensure its funding is spent effectively. A sponsor is responsible for monitoring the academy’s performance and taking appropriate action where necessary. The sponsor selects the governing body and appoints the leadership team and works with parents and the wider community. The sponsoring academy trust is directly accountable to the DfE for the sponsored academy’s performance. We want to become a sponsor because we believe we have a proven track record of improving standards and outcomes, we have grown our capacity to support schools in other educational phases and there is an LA maintained school adjacent to our Guisborough college campus which is starting to fail. Their preferred option is to partner with us and we are already offering them some structured support for Maths. Our Trust is situated in two boroughs in the Tees Valley: Redcar and Cleveland and Stockton on Tees. Both boroughs contain schools requiring improvement and include communities which suffer from generations of unemployment and low aspirations. The majority of secondary schools in both boroughs have already converted to academy status or have previously been assigned a sponsor. In Stockton the majority of these are improving but in Redcar and Cleveland the outcomes of the two LA maintained secondary schools are worsening and a cause for concern. The geographical proximity of these schools to our Guisborough campus make them natural partners [they are important ‘feeders’ for the college] and we believe we have the knowledge, expertise and capacity to improve the performance of these and other schools. The key values of our Trust are those of strengthening performance and outcomes through collaboration between schools and colleges and across the educational phases. Our vision is to engender a love of learning which will raise aspirations and improve destinations by recruiting and developing teachers of the highest calibre. We believe in an inclusive provision, providing a caring environment but with the highest expectations, proving a curriculum offer that meets the needs of all young people and enables them to make a positive contribution to their communities and the future of the region. Schools joining our Trust can expect support and challenge of the highest quality, provided by senior leaders with experience of delivering rapid, significant quality improvements and by our Lead Practitioners in English, Maths and Science. We would align our systems and processes in terms of data management, progress monitoring and evaluating the quality of teaching, learning and assessment. However, we would also be mindful of necessary differences between educational phases and not implement change for change’s sake. Schools could expect to retain autonomy over aspects such as school name, uniform. Aspects such as timetable and curriculum would be reviewed and adjusted in order to achieve the best possible outcomes for students but our Trust is mindful that a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach may not be applicable, as we learnt through the merger of our two sixth form colleges and subsequent conversion. We plan to grow our Trust through attracting ‘good’ and ‘outstanding’ schools at both secondary and primary level, which will add capacity and strengthen our ability to effectively sponsor schools in difficulty. Over time this will enable us to realise our vision for an all-through ‘family’ of schools ranged across the region. The governors and staff of an LA maintained primary school in Redcar and Cleveland – Errington Primary School in Marske - have recently submitted an expression of interest to convert to academy status and join our Trust. The school currently has a ‘good’ rating but is demonstrating a very strong trajectory of further improvement in terms of the latest accountability measures. The Head Teacher, who quickly led the school from ‘RI’ to ‘good’, is an NLE with a proven track record of leading improvement in a number of primary schools. As a result of this work often taking the Head Teacher out of school, capacity has been created, through the development of a number of teacher-leaders in the primary school. The Head Teacher’s status as an NLE and the improvements that have been achieved in the school would be an asset to attracting other primary schools to join our Trust. We are currently offering extensive support to a maintained secondary school in Guisborough with an ‘RI’ judgement, Laurence Jackson School. Should the opportunity arise, we would be very interested in sponsoring this school as we have a long-standing close relationship, the school and college are situated adjacently and we believe the interventions we are making will demonstrate a positive impact on the school’s improvement [see Part C below]. We believe that geographical proximity to a sponsored school will facilitate success, but given that the two sites of our 16-19 academy are 22 miles apart 7 spanning the Tees Valley, we could envisage sponsoring schools further afield e.g. County Durham, North Yorkshire. At conversion we conducted an audit of our readiness for growth. We have made a series of appointments of both senior leaders, expert teacher practitioners and trust board directors to facilitate planned growth [detailed in Part C and D]. 8 Part C: School improvement This section is to ensure that there is a clear idea of the approach the academy trust will take to school improvement in order to realise its strategic vision. State clearly how School Improvement will be brought into the trust and how it will be undertaken. (Recommended max 500 words) Tees Valley Collaborative Trust respects the identity and character of individual schools and their existing strengths and so the Trust’s leadership will rapidly assess where improvement is required, respond effectively to the context of each academy and adapt the strategies for intervention accordingly, with short, medium and longer term actions spanning a three year period.