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Federation: what could it mean for staff, governors, parents, pupils and the wider community?

Question:
Federation: what could it mean for staff, governors, parents, pupils and the wider community?
Answer:

A ‘hard’ federation is where two or more maintained schools come together under one governing body while retaining their individual identities. There are different ways federations work in practice:

  1. schools may or may not share a budget
  2. schools may or may not be led by an executive headteacher and
  3. schools may or may not join together as an academy trust.

Federations would enable schools to more easily share resources, staff, expertise and facilities in order to improve sustainability and the educational offer across the federation. They would likely operate on a locality model, and could be implemented as soon as 2020/21.

Staff

For staff, federations provide several opportunities:

  1. more Continuous Personal Development (CPD) and opportunities to learn from one another
  2. opportunities to work across schools and progress within the federation
  3. opportunities to develop different models of leadership, for example where a head of school focuses mostly on teaching and learning while an executive headteacher focuses on the ‘business side’ and
  4. greater job security through increased sustainability of the school.

Governors

For governors, a federation would mean that the schools’ individual governing bodies are disbanded and a new single over-arching governing body is formed. This would become the accountable body for all the schools involved and these roles could offer opportunities for more strategic governor roles. The local authority will work closely with governing bodies of schools affected to help them decide on the process and the best governance structures moving forward.

Parents and pupils

For parents and pupils, federations would offer opportunities to improve the quality of education in schools across the partnership through:

  1. a better, broader offer for pupils – both curricular and extra-curricular
  2. more resources and opportunity to employ specialist staff
  3. better recruitment, training and retention of teaching staff and
  4. more innovation to improve teaching and learning.

Wider community

For the wider community, federations would not result in significant changes to each individual schools identity, but will help to improve the quality of education across the federation.