At Mercia Learning Trust, each school has its own unique identity and is designed to meet the needs of its community. Each school is led by a headteacher and a local governing body, but we expect all our schools to share our vision and values to ensure that every child receives an exceptional education. To achieve this, we insist that each school has:

• An explicit ethos and culture of high expectations and inclusion
• Behaviour of the highest standard
• A meticulously planned curriculum, which is consistently well delivered by teachers every lesson, every day, to every child
• A robust culture of safeguarding
• A thorough and inclusive personal development strategy
• Leadership at every level who are focused and driven by the right priorities
• Rigorous internal and external quality assurance
• A culture of continuous improvement

We expect our schools to relentlessly focus on the components of highly effective schools, to develop and share best practices, to follow agreed trust quality frameworks (such as curriculum, SEN, and safeguarding), and to engage in partnership and trust-led improvement strategies. We encourage schools to move towards alignment if this improves quality and effectiveness.

For some centralised aspects of our work, such as finance, estates, IT, and HR, we insist that policy and practice are fully aligned and consistent across all schools in our trust.

Our objective is to operate in a sweet spot between a cookie-cutter, one size fits all model and schools operating completely independently. We call this 'Aligned Autonomy'.

We foster individual school responsibility, independence, and identity; but use the Trust to frame priorities, share great practice, support school improvement, provide exceptional central services. This approach frees schools to get on with what really matters: running exceptional schools.

An article about out trust, published in March 2022, explains our approach in more detail. Read the article here.

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