Our Business Services provide the infrastructure and support that enable the Trust and our academies to run effectively, enabling schools to focus on delivering high quality teaching and learning.
Finance
Managing finance is one of the most complex and time consuming tasks for any academy, especially with the legal complexities and guidelines surrounding it. Our team of Finance professionals have a wealth of experience to provide high quality, solution focused support tailored to individual academies.
- Managing all aspects of your accounting for you, ensuring full legal and tax compliance.
- Financial support, advice and training to ensure that you are able to manage your budgets and resources.
- All statutory and DfE reporting requirements will be completed on your behalf including the annual statutory accounts, monthly VAT returns and numerous ESFA returns.
- A fully managed Payroll Service in conjunction with an external payroll provider and fully managed Pension Service in conjunction with pension schemes.
HR
Our Human Resources team work with Academy Principals and Leaders to provide comprehensive and bespoke support to meet the needs of the Trust and our individual academies. We provide a responsive and flexible range of HR services to all academies within the Trust delivered by dedicated HR Managers and HR Advisors. Our HR administration team also provide support to academies with onboarding, recruitment, contract variation and a variety of other HR transactional work.
- Comprehensive up to date knowledge of education law, employment law and HR best practice.
- Written policies, guidance, toolkits and training specifically designed to meet the ever changing and complex people challenges faced by academies.
- Comprehensive support on all matters relating to casework and employee relations.
- Recruitment support including the use of Trust-wide value for money advertising arrangements and support with transactional HR and staffing matters.
- A fully managed Payroll Service in conjunction with an external payroll provider and fully managed Pension Service in conjunction with pension schemes.
Operations
Strategic planning and effective management to create a highly agile, scalable and student focused operations experience. Playing a key role in supporting each school our operations service provides strategic estate management, capital projects, health & safety, IT, cleaning and catering services.
We will work with you providing procedural guidelines, templates, advice and support to enable you to ensure compliance with all statutory and regulatory safety requirements.
The team leads and manages core estate maintenance function within the Trust. We negotiate Trust-wide contracts to maintain your building in order to achieve best value. Our Operations Managers work with you to strategically develop your estate, providing project management support for capital projects. Collaboratively we provide cover services to support the delivery of day-to-day estates services helping each other to deliver a strong service. The team ensure relevant statutory, environmental, professional and technical standards are identified and maintained in relation to estate, land and property issues.
The service has oversight of all the catering service provided within the academies and is responsible for the Quality Assurance of the catering process and food produced. The team manage the catering staff in each Academy and deliver training to ensure compliance with food safety legislation and practice.
Managing Information Technology is one of the most complex and challenging aspects of running an academy. We understand the need to ensure that services run smoothly and IT ‘just works’.
We provide a full managed service to ensure that your academy-based IT technicians are adequately trained and supported. We also work with Academy Principals and key decision makers to simplify the inherently complex IT systems and develop our services to meet your exacting needs.
Corporate Services
Corporate Services fundamentally supports the strategy of Archway Learning Trust by providing a comprehensive, confidential and professional support services to the Trust and its academies.
It is widely recognised that strong effective governance helps maintain and improve standards. Our governance team is dedicated to enabling effective governance at every level through working closely with Members, Trustees and Academy Advisory Boards, Clerks and school leaders establishing an effective system of governance.
- Opportunities for Chairs of Local Boards to participate in the termly Trust Chairs’ Forum
- Opportunities for Chairs of Local Boards and Headteachers/Principals and other senior leaders to attend the Trust’s annual leadership conference
- Targeted and bespoke training sessions offered as required, per academic year
- New governor induction and on boarding toolkits, materials and guidance
- Subscription and access to the Governor Hub, online training modules through National College and The Key for Governors
- Toolkits including governance work plans, templates, handbook, role descriptions and resources to support meaningful meeting content
- Provision of effective clerking supported by guidance, training and information on procedural matters and best practice
Academies handle a huge amount of data and it can be challenging to dedicate the right amount of resources to ensure GDPR compliance with confidence.
- Development of framework, structures, systems and processes to support Local Data Protection Leads
- DPO and dedicated central professional service supporting Academies in achieving compliance and outstanding data protection practices
- Robust and practical data protection procedures, resources, training and advice
- Framework of quality assurance through health check visits and regular peer reviews, structured in a collaborative way
Accurate and reliable legal advice can be vital for academy leaders. Academies in Archway Learning Trust will be provided with legal services via a comprehensive Service Level Agreement with a national legal firm. Our current provider is Browne Jacobson. (www.brownejacobson.com/education)
Through our business administration professionals we provide a unique central team to lead and develop the core admin function within our academies.
By dealing with the leadership, managerial and administrative complexities that confront an Academy, the team support the Principal / Head teacher in establishing and maintaining and high quality, highly skilled administration function and make a direct contribution to improving the effectiveness of the Academy.
- Structure designs and role descriptions to meet the needs
- Bespoke training programmes and workshops
- Process evaluation, designs and development
- Facilitation of professional administration hubs enabling professional support and sharing of resources and workloads
- Negotiation and management of Trust-wide contracts for administrative system, uniform suppliers, admin resources and services to ensure best value
- Relevant statutory, professional and technical standards reviews identifying and maintaining relevant compliance, controls and practice needs.
We provide a bespoke and flexible Marketing and Communications service to support our academies in improving and maintaining powerful, yet simple marketing and communication strategies through expert advice and the development of guidance and toolkits.
- Website design, hosting, and security
- Trust-wide advertising campaigns
- Graphic design
- Social media support
- Supplier recommendations and best-value exercises
- Branding guidelines and support
- PR activity
The Joining Process
Find out more about joining the Archway Learning Trust
