Our work

We are the national voice for school trusts and help shape the education policy agenda and lead the thinking about school trusts and a trust-led landscape. Our members educate more than four million children, with the majority of pupils in England attending academy schools.

Our membership brings together school trusts from every region and of every size. We work to improve the education system in England for the benefit of children and young people through strategic engagement with government, parliamentarians, regulators and policy makers. We work across political parties to shape and influence policy.

We have worked with successive admnistrations to put the needs of children, staff, and schools at the heart of policy making.

This includes:

• Securing amendments to the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill to protect pay and conditions of teaching staff in academies, and the ability of trusts to recruit in their local markets
• Setting the agenda on SEND reform, through our paper on A good life: towards greater dignity for people with learning disability
• Working with Ofsted to amend their proposed new inspection arrangements based on feedback from member trusts
• Ministerial attendance at our Annual Conference, Early Years Summit, and our policy advisory group
• Achieving the creation of separate DfE guidance for governance of school trusts, recognising the fundamental difference from maintained school arrangements
• Attending the government's Improving Education Together stakeholder group
• Invited to represent school trust employers on the proposed School Support Staff Negotiating Body

We work with work with organisations across the education sector to promote equality, diversity, and inclusion. You can read more in our statement of action, published and updated annually.