Challenge Partners CEO Dr Kate Chhatwal has been appointed to the panel of a national inquiry announced this week by the Confederation of School Trusts (CST) and will share evidence gathered from our Trust Peer Review programme.
The Inquiry on Sector-Led Improvement will bring together leaders from a diverse range of school trusts and education experts from other organisations to explore the theory and practice of improvement within school trusts.
The wide-ranging inquiry will focus on how trusts can gain assurance about the quality of their work and capacity to improve, the common goals of trust improvement and how trusts work towards them, plus the implications of these for building sector capacity and capability.
Panellists will review and build on existing evaluative tools, such as the Department for Education’s MAT Assurance Framework, and will aim to create additional resources focused on how to improve trusts.
Reacting to the announcement, Dr Chhatwal said:
"Since 2018, Challenge Partners' Trust Peer Review has provided unique and deep insights into how trusts improve schools, and I am looking forward to sharing the evidence we have gathered as part of the inquiry.
“The core purpose of every school trust is to improve the life chances of its pupils and CST’s new inquiry will make an important contribution to ensuring they do that well."
The inquiry will be chaired by CST Deputy Chief Executive Steve Rollett, who said:
“School trusts have already made a massive difference to the lives of thousands of children and there is some great work going on across the sector to do even more. This inquiry is about understanding what works and why, and how that can be applied so that everyone benefits.
"If all children did as well as pupils in the best school trusts, Key Stage 2 performance would be 14 percentage points higher nationally. The inquiry will seek to better understand how we can work together to make that ambition a reality.
“We don’t believe there is a single model of how to run or improve trusts, but we do think there is more we can collectively know about trust improvement, with insight into concrete practices and approaches. This inquiry will not be the last word on how trusts improve but we hope it will make a significant contribution and be of benefit to the sector.”
Head here for the CST announcement, which includes the full list of inquiry panellists.