Trust Central Services

Specialised, receptive and supportive, our central HR and Legal systems offer the very best in all areas of HR provision. Through our experienced Director of People and with external expert advice from Brown Jacobson LLP, the Trust are able to offer deep understanding of schools and the wider education system, through many years’ experience; The idea of this centralised HR function is that they fully understand the needs of all the schools within the Trust. Bespoke arrangements from one off projects to on-going advisory and HR admin services are tailored to each school’s needs.

Centrally and through Brown Jacobson we happily support:

• • Safeguarding/HR Audit
  • Recruitment
  • Contractual Documentation
  • Policy & Procedures Review & Updates
  • Case Work such as Disciplinary, Capability
  • Attendance Management
  • Performance Management including Appraisal, Pay Policy & Performance Related Pay
  • Staffing Re-structures
  • Managed Staffing Reductions

The trust oversees all pay and pensions administration including all statutory returns making sure staffs’ pay gets the care and attention it deserves.  We truly understand the difference an effective payroll provision can make to you and your staff and how upsetting and frustrating it can be when it goes wrong.

The Trust will oversee all:

• • Monthly Payroll
  • Expenses
  • Pensions Administration
  • HMRC Compliance

At The YES Trust, we will always strive to provide an efficient and high quality service for you through our Payroll & Pensions Administration Service.

The Trust employs a CFO who oversees all financial aspects of the Trust along with the CEO. We have an excellent track record of setting up, implementing and developing school and trust wide financial systems and processes in order to help schools as much as possible. We set up processes in a way that allows key staff to spend as much of their time helping pupils as possible. We do this by always striving to become more efficient in everything we do from a back office and finance point of view.

Remaining compliant and setting balanced budgets that get the absolute most out of the funding we receive is at the heart of what we offer as a finance team. The CFO helps Headteachers set their budget, advises on staffing and potential savings, and produces regular reports for Headteachers throughout the year.  Monthly meetings with Headteachers help ensure their budgets are being used as efficiently and effectively as possible and the CFO provides a direct link between Headteachers and the Board of Directors for any finance requests they may have.

Working with the Trust’s auditors, Murray Smith LLP, the Trust’s central finance team ensures all statutory returns are completed on time and accurately, and any improvements to systems and processes are implemented in a prompt and timely manner.

The YES Trust support IT services across all the schools specialising in supportive technology within education. The trust has a vision to deliver cutting edge solutions to the classroom to make them more manageable and productive, alleviating the daily stress and strains of technical issues.

All schools within the Trust use a single Internet Services Provider, managed by centralised firewall and content filtering solutions, ensuring greater safeguarding and data protection management for all schools. An integrated network will ensure our services are built around the needs of each school. All schools get access to helpdesk support, further supported onsite through regular visits that can also help with strategic planning, budget management and school improvement plans to develop IT.

In addition, the Trust supports schools with:

• • Server and backup solutions
  • IT development strategy
  • Creative classroom solutions to minimise workload and maximise IT impact
  • Wired and wireless network infrastructure
  • Software Licencing

The central team supports all schools within the Trust in ensuring all statutory and legislative compliance requirements are monitored and met. These include the following areas:

• • The provision of a Health and Safety (H&S) policy framework within which all schools operate with clearly defined leadership and management accountabilities and responsibilities. The policy includes a schedule of H&S arrangements for e.g. educational visits policy and accident/incident reporting procedures that are expected to be implemented at individual school level.
  • The team operates a single Educational Visits policy and supports in the management of external visits form schools as well as providing training for school-based Educational Visits Co-ordinators and Leaders.
  • A cloud-based approach to risk assessments and management, which will allow school-based staff to record statutory compliance checks for e.g. fire alarm testing, legionella testing, plant maintenance and servicing tasks.
  • The Trust provides a Health and Safety (H&S) internal audit process, whereby each school is visited annually for an in-depth H&S and Fire Risk assessment audit.
  • The Trust also provides a Data Protection Officer service supporting schools with regards to the implementation of its Data Protection policy and instances of Subject Access and Freedom of Information requests.

The Trust support all schools through procurement strategies and resource management. The overall focus of our work is to support school in achieving best value from supplier relationships. We look to support all schools as individual buyers and foster a personal supplier relationship as well as utilising the size of our buying power as a Trust by negotiating Trust deals schools can access.

The Trust is constantly reviewing value for money across all our contracts and SLAs, and adopts an open approach to group procurement exercises. Aside from statutory systems which have to be the same across all schools (HR, Payroll, Finance, etc), our Headteachers all contribute to decisions on whether to procure systems centrally or individually to meet the specific needs of their school.

“The Trust aspires to help all schools reach the highest standards of education quality, covering all aspects of academic, personal, social and mental well-being progress. We are all incredibly passionate that each schools cohort develop values and inter-personal skills so that they can contribute positively to local and global communities.”

School improvement is at the core of this work to maintain and drive best practice and develop effective ‘next’ practice. ‘School improvement’ is holistic process that has as much to do with effective staff recruitment and resource management as it does with pedagogy. Our strong Core Team delivers centralised services covering finance, HR, facilities management and IT each of which plays a part in developing and nurturing successful schools.

All schools will maintain autonomy to deliver the right curriculum for their specific cohort. Headteachers and Local Support and Scrutiny Boards (LSSB) will lead the monitoring and improvement work at individual school level, supported by a Trust appointed SIP, the Trust Executive Leadership Team (ELT) and other Senior Leaders from the trust’s other schools.

Our Scheme of Delegation (SoD) sets out clearly the responsibility of the schools and the role of the Trust in working with them to ensure that no Trust school lets down its learners and always dedicates its vision and drive to strive for excellence for all.

Executive Group, consisting of the Heads from all the Trust schools, Director of Business and is chaired by the CEO, meets monthly and is a key component of our work on school improvement.