Shared vision
One of the key difficulties for any multi-academy trust (MAT) focussed on ensuring each child takes full advantage of their education is that each school is unique, and some need more help than others to address their students' needs. For schools that are part of a successful trust, there’s a network of support that they can tap into to address the issues they face. For our schools in our MAT, being part of the ASTREA group ties them together. In any case, our staff has a common duty for raising the achievement of every pupil in the trust – not only that of children attending their own schools. This is a foundation stone for collaborative working that encourages us to unlock pupils potential so that every member of our MAT community can thrive.

Working in partnership
In my view, you can't encourage a culture of collaboration without transparency. That is the reason each school in our MAT is offered access to information on the performance of each of the academies in the group – this includes details of pupils’ attendance, achievement, and exclusions. Having this information readily available implies that ahead of maths could spot that pupils’ attainment dips in Year 6, for example, and use the data to identify a school in the group that has achieved success in raising the achievement of pupils in maths. They can then make contact, arrange a visit and work with other teachers and subject specialists to find out what initiatives have worked in that school to help pupils make good progress. This might result in the introduction of a new homework club or mentoring scheme to tackle the issues that are holding children back.

Having the capacity to scrutinize the progress being made by 12,500 students over the academy group allows us to easily spot children who are starting to fall behind and see in an instant where schools are performing well or if individual pupils and groups are not being challenged in class. Knowing this helps all schools within the trust to ensure that every child achieves.

Staff training and performance
Great teaching is the core of an effective MAT. Great emphasis is put on CPD for our teaching teams as well. Staff training and performance is gathered from across the trust for everyone from our Chair of Trustees through to our teachers, which enables us to identify common training needs. With 39 CPD courses in the date-book for the coming scholarly year, there are extensive cost funds to be achieved through economies of scale and our trust-wide ASTREA Teacher standards help to ensure that the quality we are striving for is consistently being met.

Here are my 5 Top tips for encouraging collaboration across MAT:

1. Champion a culture of shared obligation: cultivate a sense of partnership in driving the success of the group as a whole, rather than focusing on the performance of individual schools.

2. Shape a single vision for success: each school is unique, yet by building a solid network where everybody is working together to accomplish a common goal, the trust will be in the best position to give kids an extraordinary start in life.

3. Demand excellence: Don't acknowledge 'good enough’, distinguish where excellence is happening and make that a standard.

4. Make it simple to share best practice: extraordinary educating can be going on in any school. Find a way to help staff in spotting it and guaranteeing it is repeated over the gathering.

5. Make it fun – positive coordinated effort is significantly more liable to happen when it's agreeable and compensating for every one of those included.