It’s been an interesting week. As our Multi Academy Trust grows, one of the significant challenges we face is the recruitment and subsequent deployment of staff. As our numbers increase on an almost weekly basis, there always appears to be the need to bring new staff into our schools to support the children and young people.

I’d like to express my thanks to our Human Resources team who constantly step up to this challenge. They are also patient with us (teachers) as we continually change our minds about the staff we need! A huge nod of appreciation to Simon and Suzanne who are massively overworked and under-resourced. The MAT has now taken the strategic decision to expand this team so that we can have HR support on all our sites – welcome on board Gilly, Chrissy and Jo.

Keeping with the staffing theme, I’ve been really impressed this week by how adaptable our staff have been. One of the most pleasing aspects of our MAT is the fact that the staff are always willing to go where there is a need. At times some of our children get into crisis and we have to bring in staff from another part of the organisation to support the school and the young people. This week there have been a couple of challenges with our Key Stage 4 children at Spring Brook but we were able to respond quickly by drafting in some key staff from our other schools. I’d personally like to thank the staff at Spring Brook who have had a very demanding week and the staff who have agreed to support our young people by moving sites. It doesn’t go unnoticed.

I was in Birmingham yesterday at KPMG trying to make sense of this new world of Multi Academy Trusts. We spent the whole day learning about VAT, the role of the Accounting Officer, developing a business approach and resource allocation – fortunately more interesting than it sounds!! As we are constantly asked to ‘do more with less’, it is essential that we understand where savings can be made that will not affect the provision we offer our young people.

Anyway, let’s hope for good weather for the long weekend,

Graham