Welcome from the Chair of the Board of Trustees

On behalf of the Trustees and Members of Orchard Community Trust, it is with great pleasure that I welcome you to our website.

My colleagues (whose details you can find on the Governance section of our website) represent a highly skilled and committed group with expertise and professional backgrounds covering the wide range of disciplines needed for a successful multi-academy trust. 

Our role is to:

• Ensure the clarity of vision, ethos and strategic direction for the Trust;
• Hold Executive Leaders to account for the educational performance of the Trust and its pupils and the effective and efficient performance management of staff’; and
• Oversee the Trust’s financial performance and make sure its money is well spent.

We share a passion for enabling all the children and young people in our schools to achieve their true potential, equipping them to become active and responsible members of the community in the ever-changing world in which we live.  Everyone is living through uncertain and challenging times at the moment and working collaboratively has never been more important.  Our mission is to actively support each other and to share best practice for the benefit of our children, their families and our communities. Through our nurturing ethos and high standards of teaching and learning, we can help to prepare our children and young people well for their future lives.

If you would like to find out more about the work of the Trust, please contact Orchard Community Trust Team.

Gill Howell
Chair of Orchard Community Trust Board of Trustees

Welcome from the Senior Executive Leader

I am pleased to welcome you to Orchard Community Trust. Our Multi Academy Trust (MAT) consists of 7 Founder member schools and 2 associate member schools in the City of Stoke on Trent. Our schools are diverse in their make-up and welcome children and young people from all backgrounds.

We are a fully inclusive MAT that works hard to ensure the needs of all pupils are successfully met. Prior to academy conversion, the 9 schools above have worked very productively together for over 2 years as a network and have established a very positive relationship with each other, which brings both challenge and support to the MAT. They have been instrumental, together with the Trustees, in shaping the MAT, its vision, philosophy and policies. Children and young people lie at the heart of all they do.

Orchard Community Trust Board’s vision is to develop a high performing Multi Academy Trust that delivers the very best educational experience for pupils from 3–18. The Trust aims to effectively support and improve its Academies across a diverse geographical area of Stoke-on-Trent, with a clear focus on raising standards, encouraging innovation and collaboration, sharing best practice, and strengthening the ethos of the Trust to ensure that we have a positive impact on all the young people within the Trust.

Our vision is that the Academies, supported by the Trust, will provide an environment which is welcoming, caring, calm, well led and managed and purposeful. This will stretch our children young people academically, support them pastorally and help them develop socially and spiritually. This will enable them to progress successfully and with resilience and aspiration to their next phase of learning, training and/or employment.

Orchard Community Trust MAT is supported by a strong Trust Board who have a diverse range of skills and experience and who provide the effective support and challenge required to ensure that we build on our track record of excellence. The Board provides strategic challenge and partnerships in order to improve quality, share best practice and operate effectively and efficiently. We have a cost-effective organisation and a business model that delivers efficiency, so that all our students benefit from enhanced resources created by effective economies of scale.

We aim to ensure that as much as possible of our income as a MAT is directed towards the children and young people and the education we provide in order to meet all of their diverse needs.

Rob Johnstone
Senior Executive Leader, Orchard Community Trust