Our Governance

Joining The Three Rivers Learning Trust is an important decision that will help your school and its students to thrive. The networks and resourcing that are possible from schools working in strong partnerships will help you towards securing the long-term success of your school.

The Three Rivers vision enables individual academies to maintain and develop their own ethos with real autonomy, whilst committing to the overarching Trust values. This balance is necessary in order to achieve long term sustainability for our schools.

If your ethos and ours are complementary and you would like to know more about what it means to be a part of the Trust then we would be delighted to hear from you. Contact us at info@the3rivers.net

The Trust has a 5 stage joining process that values good communication to build strong relationships that stand the test of time. At each stage the governance groups of all organisations are required to agree a move to the next stage.

1. Write and regularly review a growth strategy which identifies the benefits and risks from different growth opportunities. This includes stability for existing schools already within the Trust.
2. Big picture - all governance and leadership representatives from each organisation meet over a few sessions to agree
   their common objectives for a partnership:
   
   Vision, values, principles,
   systems/structures of - governance, leadership, school improvement, autonomy, finance, HR, estates, etc.
   risks and how to manage them
   areas of non agreement
   
   At this stage it may become clear that it is not advantageous to proceed but more hopefully it becomes clear that there are significant benefits and manageable risks of partnership. This is documented in a memorandum of understanding for all organisations to sign up to.
   
   
3. Detailed due diligence - focused and detailed investigation of all aspects of all organisations to build a strong understanding of each. This audit creates the starting point for a strong and robust plan to gain the benefits and manage the risks described in stage 2.
4. Transfer of assets and liabilities to the Trust - this is a legal process which completes the documentation that moves schools into the Trust.
5. Induction - a period of high levels of support and CPD to induct the new schools into the Trust systems in line with the planning that was an outcome of due diligence.