Latest trust schools annoucement
On 14 December 2007, Children, Schools and Families Secretary Ed Balls announced that, we have reached our target of 300 schools by the end of the year which are either trust schools or in the pipeline to become trust schools.   

Schools wishing to become part of the trust school programme are invited to apply in the next round of applications, the deadline for which is 29 February 2008.

Trust schools to raise standards
Children, Schools and Families Secretary Ed Balls said in September 2007 that greater collaboration and mergers between successful schools and weaker ones would lead the next phase of the Government�s onslaught on low standards.  These improvements, he said, would be bolstered by one-to-one tuition for pupils falling behind, and new powers for teachers to promote discipline in the classroom.

Mr Balls recently announced the next steps to promote leadership and eliminate poor performance, including:

Up to �300,000 funding for a high performing school when it merges with a less successful school to help deliver improvements � this could apply to both primary and secondary schools

Trust schools � the first 30 new trust schools start in September, with another 180 in the pipeline. Of the 30, 23 are collaborations between schools

Actions to increase the number of universities, businesses and high performing schools and colleges working with academies and trusts to raise standards.

A grant of between �120,000 and �300,000 would be provided to help the stronger school with its improvement work with its new partner.

Mr Balls announced the strong lead school in the School Federation Pathfinder will become either an academy or a trust school.

He said in July that there would no longer be a requirement for high performing schools, universities and colleges to provide �2 million sponsorship when setting up academies, to break down barriers to improving educational standards.

Greensward College and John Bramston School in Essex are already discussing a planned merger, and discussions are currently going on with nine other high performing schools which want to join the pathfinder initiative.

Mr Balls said:  'Over the last 10 years, we have cut the number of weak secondary schools from 600 to just 47 and increased the number of top performing schools from 80 to 600 through concentrating on what�s going on in the classroom.

'Now we need to do more through greater personalisation and improving behaviour and giving a key role to leadership to drive up standards.

'Strong leadership is essential if we are to get good discipline, drive up standards and end failure in our schools. But rather than schools set against schools, we need to increase collaboration because the evidence is that spreading brilliant leadership to more schools gets results.
'Heads have seen that they can do better by working with other schools with more expertise in certain areas.

'By acting early and working together, good partners can avoid failure and the final resort of school closure. Academies, trust schools and new mergers between schools are spearheading this collaboration for success.

'Evidence from an evaluation of the cost effectiveness of federations suggests that where a strong school merges with a weak one, both schools make more rapid progress in a federation than they would have on their own.

'Our reforms unlock the potential to raise standards and break down the barriers to the collaboration we need.

'I want every good school to be looking beyond the school gates and asking what it can do for its community.'

Many high profile organisations are involved in trusts, including Microsoft, The Co-operative Group, Barnardo�s, Cranfield University, Unilever, Dyslexia Action and Laing O�Rourke.