Our Vision and Aims

Our Vision:

Cheam Academies Network’s (CAN’s) vision is to be a thriving community of schools collaborating and sharing resources to ensure excellence in the educational opportunities provided for local children and young people.

What this means in practice:

We are committed to the local area as our schools and their staff can work effectively together and thus support further our work with our local community

We are currently a secondary trust with mainstream and specialist expertise.  We include mainstream schools with two specialist bases for students who need different teaching and support, including separate classes to the mainstream school.  (One for Post 16 MLD and the other for Autistic Spectrum Condition from 11 – 19 years of age).

Ideally, we would have both primary and secondary schools within our trust.  This would support strong progression focused links within our schools as well as valuable links across the same phase (ie primary or secondary).

Regardless of our membership, a key focus for the Trust is ensuring that we build capacity and expertise within our schools, and that our children thrive with well-targeted teaching and support providing them with an excellent basis for their future.

Our Values and Principles:

We believe in equal partnership between the schools in our network, each committed to achieving the best for all children and young people entering its schools.  We expect each of our schools to maintain and develop high quality leadership and management so that each school promotes its own identity and can make decisions in the best interest of its school community.  Schools are encouraged to work together to benefit local children and their families.

What this means in practice?

Our schools have their own LGBs (Local Governing Bodies) that take an active role in the strategic development of the school, receiving reports, raising queries and holding the school to account.  The Headteacher remains a member of the Trust Executive team, and is responsible for the performance of his/her school.  The Trust monitors high performance through various governance structures as well as through the work of the CEO.  This work can be either  general support and problem-solving discussions between CEO and Headteacher, or through a more intense input eg through a period of rapid change or where concerns have arisen.

We believe that high quality performance is a direct impact of high quality leadership; for this reason, it priorities support for leaders at all levels, whether through school accountability structures or through working across the Trust.

Examples of support would include the provision of middle leading training, links across subjects within the Trust and focused work from Trust leaders.  The Trust also provides cross Trust training opportunities and uses Review Days to allow subject or pastoral leads to review provision across the Trust.  We supplement this support by actively recruiting new leaders (both at governance and school level) to strengthen teams, ensuring clear lines of accountability. 

The Trust also runs executive team meetings (CEO and Headteachers), with sharing of common issues or concerns to take a way forward.  The CEO's work includes supporting the Headteacher and/or senior leaders through a period of transition. Sharing of resources, formal joint commissioning, and joint problem-solving are all focused on the benefits this brings to our schools and our children. 

Our Aims:

We aim to promote and support the highest standards of local education.  This includes children's academic progress as well as their personal development.

Our schools will work together to share resources, make cost savings and support each school to develop excellent provision for our children.

As an accredited sponsor, we have the capacity to sponsor a new school or sponsor a school that needs some support and will do so where it aligns with our core purpose of high quality local education for local children.

More about what this means in practice can be found here: