Welcome to the Aspire Community Trust

I am delighted to welcome you to our website and introduce you to the Aspire Community Trust. We are a small group of nine schools who formed a Trust in 2017 to further make a difference to the lives of our children, their families and our staff.

Our family of schools are based in the wonderfully vibrant and diverse City of Southampton, on the South Coast of England. Our trust is based on the co-operative values of: self-help, self-responsibility, democracy, equality, equity and solidarity. We believe in openness, honesty, social responsibility and caring for others.

In total, we are privileged to support the life chances of over 3000 students aged between 4 and 16, focusing sharply on providing them with an exceptional educational experience each and every day. We are a diverse group of schools serving a diverse population with over 50 languages being spoken within our schools. We appreciate and celebrate our differences and use these diverse perspectives, lifestyles, backgrounds, cultures and religion to drive to enrich our knowledge and understanding of the world.

Our students are supported by over 300 staff – teaching and non-teaching who work tirelessly to ensure our community thrives both academically and socially. The Trustees, Headteachers and Leadership teams of all of our schools know the importance our staff play in the trust and as such ensure work/life balance is an absolute priority. We create systems that create time for staff not more work. We continuously self-evaluate ourselves asking whether we could do things both effectively and efficiently. Put very simply, a happy staff makes for happy children!

Unlike a Multi-Academy Trust, our schools remain autonomous bodies with their own governing bodies and their own Headteachers. Whilst we are all Foundation School that work within the Aspire Community Trust, we also maintain our Local Authority maintained status. This is important – we want to provide a local education that meets the needs of our local context.

Our memorandum of understanding means that we balance the support for each other with challenge and ultimately holding each other to account. This is important as we recognise children only really have one chance at their education and it is incumbent on us to get it right and get it right well.

The curriculum (including extra-curricular and enrichment opportunities) is at the heart of all that we do in our schools. We want our children to lead a happy and successful lives and our rich, broad and balanced curriculum focus in on knowledge development as well as the acquisition of key skills such as: leadership, organisation, resilience, initiative and communication.

I am proud, honoured and humbled to be the Chair of the Aspire Community Trust and to see the innovation taking place in our schools for the benefit of the children in our care.

I hope you enjoy your visit to our website, and that you find the information you are looking for. Please feel free to contact us directly with any queries you have.

Warmest Regards,

Harry Kutty

Chair – Aspire Community Trust