Tollbar Multi - Academy trust

I am David Hampson, Chief Executive of Tollbar Multi-Academy Trust. A multi-academy trust is a limited company with charitable status. Currently in the MAT we have three establishments. We have Tollbar, which is the one we converted. The high performing academy to begin with. At the same time we were converting Tollbar, we were converting a school called Lindsey School to Cleethorpes Academy in the September of 2010. Since then, this September, Reynolds Primary School has joined us now as Reynolds Academy. It's a combination of things. It is a combination of freedoms, it's a combination of changing structures, it's a combination of be into able to respond immediately to changes that are taking place. Our colleagues will agree, we are living in an ever-changing world, where the curriculums changing, employment laws changing, it is just a matter of being able to respond to all those changes immediately and that's what we do, we will respond very, very quickly. From an infrastructure point of view, because the academies are working together, it gives much greater structure and you've got a larger pot of money to deal with, to be flexible with. It's hard work, it's sometimes a bit more complex than it is being under the umbrella the of local authority but the freedoms you gain give you much more personal satisfaction and the ability to manage and that is what I've always wanted to do. We run our MAT on a very strict business model that is run in the interest of the education of the pupils. Therefore we look at using the money to the full extent we can to raise resources and the education of our students. We are very keen on you using local providers, obviously we go out to tender for them but they are all local providers and they have a close working relationship with this and the one thing we look for most specifically is value for money which isn't just cost, it's a quality the workmanship and the quality of their service to us. We tender out for maintenance contracts, for heating, plumbing, electrical, IT and basic maintenance and then the very large builds, like the building next door, we got out to full tender for. Understandably it's public money and understandably you are under a high level of scrutiny and therefore, over the last two/three years now, the levels of scrutiny have gone up and up and up. Obviously because of situations that have happened elsewhere and because it's necessary. One of the big problems we have in area is recruiting staff. We've worked very, very *** raising the quality of teachers and attracting teachers to the establishments that's now happening. It allows us to pick up the strength of each establishment because Tollbar does not have all of the strengths, we have used the strength of the schools that have joined us as well into the MAT. We have developed in that way. We are talking to another secondary at the moment. We have talked to other primaries. We don't want to become a very large MAT. We want to be able to have the freedoms that we have got and be able to apply them so they make the biggest impact on the children that come and join our MAT. Therefore for us it is grow slowly but it's grow effectively.