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Trends in Trust Value: 2019 – 2024
This report, based on over 203,000 staff responses since 2019, offers valuable insights into how teachers, school leaders, and education staff across England perceive the value of being part of a school trust.
Key findings:
- Strengthening vision and values:
- 74% of staff find the trust’s mission clear
- 54% believe trust values are fully or largely embedded within schools
- Differences by role:
- Leaders are much more likely to feel part of the trust community, particularly compared to teachers
- Similarly, leaders are much more confident in the benefits the trust presents than those in other roles
- Stable areas:
- Communication, knowledge sharing, and responsibility clarity between trusts and schools have remained steady, with about 50% of staff responding positively each year
Why download the report?
For trust leaders, understanding these trends can help improve staff satisfaction, foster stronger communities, and ultimately lead to better outcomes.
As Samuel Skerritt, Director of Public Affairs and Policy at the Confederation of School Trusts, commented:
“The power of this is clear – where people say they feel part of a trust community, they are much more likely to recommend their workplace.”
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Introduction and Methodology
The Department for Education outlines what a “high-quality trust” looks like through its Trust Quality Descriptors, which act as guidelines for trusts to aim for excellence. Beyond this, there is freedom for trusts to decide how exactly they achieve this, and there are a wide range of operating models, from some trusts that favour alignment across schools to those that encourage autonomy. This can be seen in the level of visibility of the trust across the communities it serves. In some cases, the trust invests significant effort in building a cohesive organisation across settings, while others encourage schools to run as independent entities and have limited centralised policies.
In this report, we explore elements of trust perception, particularly how staff perceive the trust they are employed by. We have drawn insights from the Edurio Staff Experience and Wellbeing Survey, consisting of over 203,000 staff responses captured between September 2019 and July 2024. See the appendix for a full breakdown of the response numbers for each question analysed in the report.
The Edurio Staff Experience and Wellbeing Survey comprehensively examines key elements of staff work life, enabling school and trust leaders to understand the needs and priorities of their staff. The survey covers 18 modules, from communication to workload, professional support and general job satisfaction. This report mainly focuses on two key questions: “How confident are you that being part of the trust is beneficial?” and “To what extent do you feel like a part of the trust community?”. It explores staff experiences over time and based on their roles, as well as other elements of trust culture.
Executive Summary
Elements of the trust relationship are strong, but there is room for improvement
Most staff are positive about the trust’s vision and values and trust-wide knowledge sharing. However, there is room for improvement in supporting staff to feel like part of a trust community and ensuring clarity on the overall benefit of trust membership. Additionally, these two elements have a strong relationship with staff members’ likelihood to recommend their workplace.
Leadership views are far more positive than other roles
Teaching staff have been the least positive in this area for each of the last five years, and those in a leadership role are significantly more positive than all other staff. Only 21% of teachers reported feeling strongly that they are part of the trust community in 2023/24, compared to 54% of leadership. 28% of teachers have high confidence in the benefit of the trust, compared to 63% of leaders.
Trust vision and values are strengthening over time
Positive perceptions of trust vision and values have grown over the past six years, with 74% of staff finding the trust’s mission clear. Additionally, over half (54%) of staff feel that their trust’s values are embedded fully or to a great extent within their schools.
Other aspects of the trust-school relationship remain unchanged
Satisfaction with communication, knowledge sharing and the division of responsibilities between trust and school have remained relatively constant throughout the last five years. Each year, around half of staff have responded positively about these factors.
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