Central Support Services for Aquinas Academies
The Central Management Fee, payable by all academies, includes the provision of all of the following:
SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT
- Dedicated Primary and Secondary leads to support schools
- Termly monitoring reviews – both
Primary/Secondary - Peer reviews – Primary/Secondary
- Centralised support for SIP and SEF
- Annual collaborative review of education with another trust
- Trust network groups across all areas (i.e. EDI, Literacy, Mathematics)
- Inclusion Lead & Teacher Development Lead
- Opportunities for peer to peer school
improvement work
FINANCE AND FACILITIES
- Centralised finance
- In house Payroll
- Financial audit
- Termly financial monitoring reviews
- Budgeting and forecasting system and central support
- Central capital improvement funding and support
- Central procurement for trust-wide contracts
- Centralised compliance management and asset register
- Centralised H&S with annual on-site audits
- Provision of designated Health & Safety expert
- Central IT infrastructure
- Support for risk management
HUMAN RESOURCES
- HR advice and guidance
- Dedicated helpline
- Employee Assist
- Trust-wide recruitment processes
- Template letters, contracts, reports etc.
- HR policies
- Annual Edurio survey
- Central recruitment
GOVERNANCE AND LEGAL
- Full support for data protection
- Admissions support
- Trust policies, plus templates for individual policies
- Safeguarding support
- Governance support
- Non-financial independent audit
PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
- Full suite of courses
- Leadership development
- Support for external courses
- Trust-wide professional development days
- ECT support
- NPQs
- Apprenticeship levy to support role development and further study
- Cross Trust working opportunities
- Coaching and mentoring
- Trust Conference
BRANDING AND COMMUNICATION
- PR and Marketing advice and support
- Website audit and design advice
- Trust photography
- Social media advice and support