The Circle Trust was born out of a desire that all children and young people have an excellent well-rounded education and flourish in first-rate schools where the best teaching, the best facilities and the most up-to-date resources are made available to them.
The Story of our Trust
The Circle Trust is an educational charity and exists to do one thing and that is to promote education for the common good.
Our Trust was established in 2018, born out of two governing boards of a primary school and a secondary school working together with the headteachers to explore whether it would improve schools for the benefit of their pupils, staff and local communities if they were to establish a multi academy trust.
In those early days of the academies system the then governors were understandably protective of their own school, even a little fearful about what they might lose! But all were entirely zealous in ensuring that “if” the Trust were to be created it must be a values driven organisation, that provided an excellent well-rounded education for all, where pupils flourished and served local communities. The crucible of those months of exploration ended with everyone convicted it was right to establish a Trust! Nearly ten years later, we know there is little lost but everything to be gained in joining a trust where schools work together in this deeply connected way.
Our next steps were based on not just “what” the Trust would do, but as importantly “how” it would do it. This began with determining our values and vision. We curated our vision statement so that all schools will feel welcomed and our values so that they will be the enduring north star in all that we do.
Our vision
The Circle Trust believes that all children and young people deserve to have an excellent well-rounded education and to flourish in first rate schools with the best teaching, the best facilities and the most up to date resources made available to them.
they drive our behaviour and decision making.
The highest educational outcomes for every learner is paramount
Preserving the unique identity and ethos of all partner schools is essential
To be anything but utterly
inclusive is non-negotiable
Being self-reflective is essential in encouraging innovation, our Trust is always driven to improve further
What we say is what we do, we recognise talent, foster expertise, believe well-being for all is fundamental
Our Trust promotes collaborating with others and being outward looking
Crucially, both governing boards understood from the very beginning that our Trust was a new creation and not an extension of a single existing organisation. This meant we spent some hours debating our new name! On the one hand a name might seem a rather frivolous thing but of course names do matter. Our name “The Circle Trust” was chosen because it symbolically reflects the way we work. The name is purposefully neutral and without association to a particular school, educational phase or type. Circles give us a pictorial sense of inclusivity because they naturally expand and the overlapping circles in our logo celebrating our strong desire to collaborate. Circles too have many positive idioms, such as family circle; we use a circle on a map to highlight the importance of geographic closeness because we think that is important. Together we enjoy a good measure of circle puns to name groups and our approach to working together. Our termly meetings are called “The Circle of Trust”. When Headteachers gather it is in the “Inner Circle”. We hold “Circling Back” briefings for our stakeholder groups (pupil, staff and community circles), our professional development work is named the “Virtuous Circle”, and our school improvement work is naturally the “Learning Curve!” One way or another we are quite keen on circles!
Today, we are a thriving family of schools, and our fundamental view remains that preserving the unique identity and ethos for all schools is essential, but we are far more than a collection of individual schools working nicely together. We together are The Circle Trust – the Trust is the schools, the schools are the Trust. As a single legal entity, we share the responsibility of all children and young people across the Trust – we have the ability and privilege to improve education for all pupils. By working together in this way, we become more than the sum of our parts and a great deal more than any one school could achieve alone.
We work in a very transparent way, where schools have the opportunity to influence and their views are taken into account. As a trust we are rooted in this approach and our ambition is clear; to improve the educational outcomes for children and young people.
Improving the quality of education remains our wildly important goal. The Circle Trust is now a specialist organisation – we exist to do one thing – to run and improve schools to advance education for the public benefit. In our view the foundations of strong schools: high quality teaching, well regarded pastoral care, a well-designed curriculum, vibrant opportunities to enrich students’ experience with consistently strong progress and attainment above the national average. In short, schools where adults want to work and where parents want their child to attend.
Our Trust now serves over 5,000 pupils and continues to grow…
Would you like to find out more?
If you would like to know more about The Circle Trust, please contact us via contact@thecircletrust.co.uk