We apply the same collective approach to Finance and Operations as we do to education. This approach has led to significant efficiencies, service quality improvements and risk reduction for all our schools.

A combination of successful grant applications and the benefits of working collectively have contributed to significant savings. These savings have helped our schools weather a challenging financial climate and have ensured a relentless focus on teaching and learning.

Much is said about Trust finances. Words like top-slice strike fear into the hearts of school leaders and governors who can be forgiven for imagining pictures of severed budgets and escalating costs of trust membership. The reality is very different. Learn Academies Trust has made every pooled pound work hard on behalf of the whole organisation.

Working collectively means Learn Academies Trust schools have benefitted from joint procurement, improved and streamlined systems, better IT, specialist, high-quality services and reduced risk. This is a classic example of the whole being better than the sum of its parts. The core function of finance and operations in Learn Academies Trust is to ensure school leaders and teachers can maintain their attention and energy for teaching and learning. Pooling a small percentage of each school’s budget and sharing as many costs as possible allows us to align key aspects of provision, create efficiencies, provide high quality services and, crucially, it safeguards maximum funding for the main thing: learning.

IT Systems and Support

Learn Academies Trust has developed a stable, high quality, fit for purpose and scalable IT network solution for each school. We are committed to:

• Investing in IT for the long term
• Supporting high quality teaching delivery, and minimise administration time
• Developing internal IT expertise in order to improve capability across all schools
• Developing a standardised model approach to networks, communications, hardware and software
• Achieving better value for money on IT purchases
• Reducing long term maintenance costs
• Increasing support response times
• Achieving consistently high service levels and performance of IT services.

Since 2019, as part of a Department of Culture, Media and Sport national programme and in partnership with Leicestershire County Council, eight of our schools have been upgraded to Ultra-Fast Fibre Broadband. This is an ongoing programme.

The Trust and its schools were amongst the first in the UK to be awarded Cyber Essentials Certification, an effective, Government-backed scheme that helps protect organisations against a range of the most common cyber attacks. Learn Academies Trust’s centralised approach to IT systems means that we can implement and maintain this standard on behalf of all of our schools, without any additional work for school staff.