OUR RATIONALE

For some time, Rainham Mark Education Trust has been looking at joining another MAT.

There are several reasons this course of action. This has included:

• Our ambition to provide even greater opportunities for pupils to flourish academically, socially, and personally. 
• The opportunity to improve capacity (leadership, school improvement and central services) to provide the very best for our communities. 
• Our desire to do more for our staff - enhancing professional development and career progression for all staff.
• Our expectation that we can achieve financial efficiencies from economies of scale - and do more with the funding that we do have

The recent government White Paper wants schools to work in collaboration with one another and to become part of a trust ensuring the long-term sustainability of individual schools. 

Reaching this point has been a long and thorough process:

Research process:

• Reviewed the location and status of all 163 Grammar Schools across England
• Reviewed the status and location of the 97 Grammar Schools, which are academies
• MATs were then checked for successful primary experience according to Ofsted and published data

This research was then used to create a longlist of possible trusts, who were then reviewed to see how their vision and values aligned with our own. 

Conversations then took place with the Trusts, and expressions of interest gathered to understand how we could work together. 

Headteachers and Trustees then visited schools in a smaller number of preferred Trusts. Visits to schools in the Rainham Mark Education Trust were then also arranged. 

A final shortlist of two Trusts then went through a fuller due diligence process, before the preferred Trust was selected.