The most important thing at Achievement through Collaboration is always our children! 

We want them to reach high academic standards, whilst developing the personal qualities that will equip them for successful futures in modern Britain. 

We put our children first – every child no matter what background, no matter what barriers.

We work together so that our children achieve, belong and collaborate. 

At Achievement through Collaboration we believe that the Multi Academy Trust model offers our schools the opportunity to achieve more as a group of schools than we could as individuals. Understandably, there is often reluctance from  schools with strong leadership and governance to join a MAT. Often, MATs are seen as somewhere where school leaders lose autonomy, where there will be increased (and unnecessary) prescription, where standardisation restricts a school’s ability to serve its community.

There is no “one size fits all” at AtC! What we have are shared values and a common purpose. Our Trustees are determined to enable schools to retain their individuality to serve their children, their staff and their communities.  We strive to provide the right services, support, expertise and resources that will build capacity in schools, empowering leaders to focus on what really matters – the children.  

Our approach works through careful, considered alignment, standardisation and autonomy. To illustrate how this works in principle, we could consider the teaching of phonics in schools.

Alignment means our schools agree that the effective teaching of phonics is fundamental in ensuring our children become fluent readers.

Standardisation means that all our schools will select a high quality systematic synthetic phonics scheme to support the delivery of effective phonic teaching.

Autonomy means that schools select the scheme that they feel best suits their individual context. 

Governance of schools provides further illustration of our alignment, standardisation, autonomy model. 

Alignment means that we believe that each school in our Trust needs a strong, well-supported Local Governing Body to enable them to respond to and meet the needs of their individual communities. We agree on the core function of each LGB and have a scheme of delegation that makes clear their responsibilities. 

Standardisation means that each LGB within AtC is expected to know their schools exceptionally well. This insight enables LGBs to support their schools whilst fulfilling a role within the Trust so that no pupil, no staff member, no parent, no governor is left behind. 

Autonomy means that because each LGB at AtC are well trained, they use their knowledge of their schools to provide appropriate support to school leaders to design an individual, appropriate curriculum that equips every pupil for a successful life beyond the school and Trust.