Cost and Benefits

We recognise budgets are tight and the Headteacher and governors will be rightly worried about costs. The Trust will ensure all reasonable expenses for conversion are covered: there will be no cost to the individual school for conversion. Quality services do, however, come at a cost and whilst there are clear benefits of receiving significantly improved provision, schools will be mindful of the financial impact. The Trust levies a 5% top slice to provide these services.

It is worth bearing in mind that:

• The Trust can achieve lower prices for comparable quality because of economies of scale and the projection for the MAT.

• The Trust can access funds that maintained school and Local Authorities cannot access. These funds support school improvement and the executive team.

• We are committed to achieving value for money. We keep the number of roles within the executive team within budget, but these will grow as the Trust grows. For example, we currently employ a Director of SEND. Overtime, with expansion, we will employ an educational psychologist, a speech and language therapist and an occupational therapist for the exclusive use of Trust schools.

• Once the Trust gets to 3,000 pupils (it is already at 2,300) or five schools, we will receive a significant annual capital allocation. Two of the existing three schools are new builds/or are to be rebuilt and will have less demand on the capital funding.

• Once a school joins the Trust it will no longer pay for services from Sefton; these could include Finance, HR, School Improvement, Payroll, Sims, IT Support, Legal and GDPR.

It may well be that the cost of being a member of our Trust is less than you would pay to Sefton as a maintained school. We would be happy to come and talk this through with you.