Join Our Trust

Together we grow great schools

OAK Multi Academy Trust is a family of five schools in Leicestershire, united by our values of Opportunity, Achievement and Kindness and a belief that schools achieve more when they work together.

Our schools have their own identities, strengths and communities. We value those differences, while recognising the considerable benefits of shared expertise, collective strategic leadership and a commitment to providing an excellent, inclusive education for every child.

We are proud of what our schools have achieved together, but equally ambitious about what we can achieve in the future.

Joining OAK is not about becoming like our existing schools. It is about becoming part of a collective endeavour in which every school contributes, every school benefits and we continually learn from one another.

We welcome conversations with primary, secondary and special schools, as well as those interested in developing new specialist provision. We believe that bringing together complementary expertise can create opportunities that might otherwise be difficult to achieve.

What makes OAK different?

Excellent teaching and learning, strengthened through collaboration

Improving the quality of education is at the heart of our work.

Through our Growing Together approach, schools work alongside one another to evaluate their practice, share expertise and identify opportunities for improvement. Our approach combines support with appropriate challenge, recognising that every school has strengths to share and areas it can develop.

We are proud of the educational outcomes achieved across OAK, including strong academic performance at both primary and secondary level and particularly positive outcomes for disadvantaged pupils.

We also recognise that school improvement is about more than results. We want our schools to provide an excellent education that prepares children and young people for the next stage of their lives.

There is no lead school within OAK. Each school is a valued partner, contributing to the development of the trust and benefiting from the collective expertise of colleagues across our schools.

Developing our people

We place considerable importance on the professional development of our colleagues. We believe that investing in people is one of the most effective ways to improve schools.

Our approach includes professional learning across schools, subject and leadership networks, opportunities to develop and share expertise, and a growing emphasis on instructional coaching.

We have invested in Steplab to support the development of high-quality instructional coaching, alongside our OAK Playbook, which provides a shared understanding of effective teaching.

We want professional development to be relevant, practical and sustained, rather than something that happens occasionally on training days.

Being part of OAK also creates opportunities for colleagues to work beyond their own schools, contribute to trust-wide developments and grow as leaders.

Digital transformation: FRONTIERS

We are educating children and young people for a world that is changing rapidly, where technology is reshaping how we live, learn and work, and where many of the opportunities and challenges they will encounter are difficult to predict.

Through FRONTIERS, we want to help our young people develop the knowledge, skills and confidence to thrive in that world. Alongside a strong foundation in learning, we want to develop independence, creativity, critical thinking and the ability to use technology thoughtfully and responsibly.

Providing every pupil across our five schools with their own iPad is one part of this ambition. More importantly, FRONTIERS is about developing teaching and learning to respond to a changing world, creating opportunities for collaboration, exploration, creativity and more personalised approaches to learning.

Inclusion is central to our thinking. Digital tools can help remove barriers, improve accessibility and enable children and young people with different needs to participate more fully and independently in their learning.

We are equally clear that technology does not replace excellent teaching, strong relationships or secure knowledge and understanding. Its value lies in how thoughtfully it is used and the opportunities it creates.

We recognise that meaningful digital transformation takes time. It requires investment in colleagues, thoughtful implementation and a willingness to evaluate what is working and what needs to improve.

FRONTIERS continues to evolve as we learn from our experiences. We see this as an important area in which schools joining OAK can both benefit from our work and contribute to its future development.

Inclusion is fundamental to our approach

We believe that inclusion and high-quality education go hand in hand.

Over recent years, we have worked deliberately to strengthen inclusion across OAK, building on the considerable expertise within our schools and developing a more coherent trust-wide approach.

Our specialist provision includes Riverbank at Brookside and Starlings at Overdale. These provisions are an important part of our work, but our commitment to inclusion extends much further. We want all our schools and colleagues to understand their role in meeting the needs of children and young people, including those who face additional barriers to learning.

We recognise that there is always more to learn and improve.

Looking ahead, we want to develop a more significant role in specialist education, including working with special schools and exploring opportunities to develop new specialist provision.

We believe OAK has much to contribute through our experience of school improvement, inclusive practice, professional development, digital transformation and the support provided by our central team.

Equally, we recognise that special schools bring distinctive expertise, experience and approaches from which we can learn. We are particularly interested in partnerships that bring these strengths together, enabling mainstream and specialist colleagues to contribute to one another’s development.

Our ambition is not simply to extend OAK, but to develop our collective expertise and create better opportunities for children and young people with additional needs.

This sits alongside our continued ambition to work with primary and secondary schools. What matters most is a shared commitment to children and young people, a willingness to learn together and a belief that we can achieve more through collaboration.

Central services that work alongside you and grow with you

Our central services are an important part of what makes OAK work.

We have invested in high-quality expertise across finance, HR, estates, operations and technology, providing our schools with professional support and the confidence to focus on education.

Our approach is based on central colleagues working alongside school leaders, understanding their individual contexts and finding solutions together. We want our services to be responsive, accessible and genuinely helpful.

Strong financial management, effective governance and well-developed systems provide important foundations for our schools. They also allow us to make the most of our collective resources and invest in the areas that make the greatest difference.

We recognise that central services must continue to develop as the trust grows. Schools joining OAK will bring different experiences, needs and expertise, and we see this as an opportunity to strengthen our services further.

Our aim is to offer the expertise and capacity of a well-supported trust while retaining the personal relationships, flexibility and responsiveness that come from being a small, closely connected organisation.

A trust where schools contribute, not simply join

We don’t believe there is a single model of a great school. Our schools have their own histories, communities, strengths and identities, and we believe those differences make OAK stronger.

At the same time, we have developed considerable confidence in the benefits of working strategically together. Our schools share a vision, common expectations and collective responsibility for the quality of education across the trust.

We want every school to contribute to OAK’s direction, bringing its own expertise and ideas while benefiting from the experience and support of others. This is not about unnecessary uniformity, but recognising what we can achieve together that might be more difficult individually.

Transparency is particularly important to us. We want school leaders and governors to understand how strategic decisions are made, contribute to the thinking behind them and recognise the benefits for their schools.

Importantly, those benefits need to be visible. One of the clearest examples has been during our first year of GAG pooling, when we made significant and welcomed improvements to outdoor learning environments across our early years settings. These practical improvements demonstrate how collective decisions about resources can make a real difference for children and their schools.

We recognise that joining a trust involves changes to governance, accountability and financial arrangements. We believe these should be understood openly, alongside the opportunities that come from being part of a wider organisation.

Above all, we want schools to feel that they belong to OAK, contribute to its development and benefit from being part of something collectively stronger.

What would joining OAK mean for your school?

We recognise that school leaders and governors will have practical questions about becoming part of OAK, including what might change, the support available and how we would work together.

We’ve brought together some further information about our approach to school improvement, professional development, inclusion, governance and the experience of joining OAK.

Find out more: What Joining OAK Means for Your School or Trust

Could OAK be the right trust for your school or trust?

We recognise that considering joining a multi academy trust is a significant decision. It involves much more than structures, systems and governance. It is about finding an organisation whose values, approach and ambitions are right for your school and its community.

We would welcome an informal conversation with any school interested in finding out more about OAK, whether you are actively considering joining a trust or simply exploring future possibilities.

There is no expectation or commitment attached to an initial discussion. We would be interested in hearing about your school, understanding your ambitions and exploring what we might achieve together.

Andrew Wilson
Chief Executive Officer
OAK Multi Academy Trust

awilson@oaktrust.org

Interested in OAK, but not ready to join?

We recognise that joining a multi academy trust is a significant decision, and that the strongest relationships often develop over time.

You may be interested in OAK’s approach but not currently considering joining a trust. Perhaps you’d simply like to get to know us, share some of your school’s expertise or explore opportunities to work together.

We would welcome those conversations.

We already work with schools and colleagues beyond OAK and believe there is considerable value in learning from one another. Whether through school improvement, inclusion, professional development or digital learning, there may be opportunities to collaborate and support each other.

We would be happy to explore these possibilities without any expectation or commitment to joining OAK.

Over time, those relationships might lead to conversations about becoming part of the trust. Equally, they may develop into valuable professional partnerships in their own right.

What matters to us is getting to know one another, building trust and exploring what we might achieve together.

Please click here to download ‘OAK Multi Academy Trust – by Numbers’

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