How did this come about?
Before the coronavirus pandemic, Chiltern Learning Trust (CLT) had already been in early discussions with 4 local schools who were interested in joining the trust. When lockdown was announced these 4 schools asked if they could be part of CLT's hub school planning. The trust agreed and in the process has learnt a valuable lesson – Adrian sums it up nicely:
"This has been a great model when thinking about the trust’s growth, providing a nice ‘half-way house’ for both the trust and the schools themselves. From our perspective, the usual due diligence can only go so far, so actually working with the leaders and teachers from these schools and building relationships has been invaluable – we will definitely be keeping this as a new element of the due diligence process going forward."