WE Trust Leadership Series 

The Trust Leadership Series (TLS) aims to support you to meet the complex challenges of our 
current education system and its narrow focus on securing outcomes, whilst maintaining a focus 
on a ​whole education​ for ALL students, by:  

- Establishing a whole education (for all):  

o What is it? 
o How do you realise it? 
o What do you need to do more of? 
o What do you need to abandon? 
- Choosing to do innovative and creative things in the right way and for the right reasons. 

We will explore this through a series of Interest Groups which will evolve over the course of the 
Series. Following the Principles of the Whole Education network, and to ensure that you get 
maximum benefit from the TLS, we want to spend time refining the Interest Groups (IGs) and 
establishing how relevant they are for the development of your trust.   
 
These IGs currently are: 
 
● Trust Wide Whole Education 
● Curriculum change and development 
● Vision, Values, Culture and Brand 
● Autonomy Vs. Prescription 
● Sustained and Impactful Growth 
● Business and Finance Planning 
● Personnel 
 
   
  
Trust Wide Whole Education: ​This is the core of the series and so, initially, we will focus on where you 
are with the principles and exemplification of a ​Whole Education​ in your Trust, celebrating and exploring: 
 
- What are your successes in delivering a Whole Education as a leader/leaders? 
- What evidence, compelling rationale or other means are used to ensure buy-in and engagement? 
- What barriers have you faced/overcome? 
- What would enable you to achieve more? 
- How well and to what extent are the principles of a Whole Education brought into across your trust? 
o Board members 
o Governors 
o Heads 
o Senior Leaders 
o Leaders 
o Staff 
o Students 
o Parents 
o Community partners 
- How confident are those responsible for effectively implementing a whole education? 
- How are some of the wider skills and qualities understood as important in their own right but also in 
driving academic success 
- What methods/models are you using to help implement a high-quality whole education across your 
trust? 
- What are the ways in which you are incentivising and supporting innovation across the trust? 
- How are you supporting leaders at all levels to critically engage with evidence and practice from 
elsewhere? 
- How well aligned are your leadership and teaching PD opportunities in helping staff to confidently 
deliver a whole education? 
- To what extent is a whole education reflected in the curriculum in subject areas/schools/across the 
trust  
 
From here we will explore other areas through the ‘lens’ of a whole education: 
 
Curriculum change and  How are you/will you meeting/meet the challenge and opportunity of a new inspection 
development   framework and the research and thinking that underpins it? 

Vision, values, culture  Your USP and how emboldened are you to validate the why, what and how of your Trust? How 
and brand  is this realised and exemplified across your trust and how do you ‘measure’ it? Is your context 
unique and diverse? 

Autonomy Vs.  How and to what extent to do you allow autonomy? Is autonomy universal or bespoke to 
Prescription  Principles/systems/schools/business functions/educational priorities?  

Sustained and Impactful  What is the mid to long term development plan for your trust? What are the challenges? What 
Growth  are the opportunities? 

Business and finance  To what extent is the educational philosophy driving the business and finance planning or vice 
Planning   versa? 

Personnel   What are the challenges and solutions to approaching governance and accountability? How are 
you leading the development of talent, succession planning and staff deployment? To what 
extent is abandonment helping to focus on the priorities whilst helping colleagues to manage 
their workload? 
 
The Trust Leadership Series will provide participants with the opportunity to share best practice, 
learn from each other and from external experts.