David Ross Education Trust
The Foundation's vision is to raise young people's aspirations and achievements.
The David Ross Education Trust (DRET) was established to ensure that this vision could be achieved through a network of high quality academies. By offering young people an outstanding range of opportunities and experiences, the Trust believes that every child can find something that they can excel at. This in turn will help transform life chances.
Established in 2007, the first academy in the Trust was Havelock Academy in Grimsby.
With the addition of its second academy, Malcolm Arnold Academy, in September 2010, the Trust acquired multi-academy status. Since then a host of primary and secondary academies across the East Midlands and North of England have become part of the Trust.
Please click here to find out more about our academies.
Through our hub model, the Trust have been able to significantly improve student attainment, as well offering life changing opportunities.
- In 2012, on average, the Trust's secondary academies improved their A*- C GCSE results (including maths and English) by 9 percent points. This includes Malcolm Arnold Academy which has gone from 34% to 52% since 2010 and King Edward VI Academy who have improved by over 30 percentage points in the last two years.
- The Trust's school improvement team have been working with schools and academies, both primary and secondary, who were placed into Special Measures before partnering with DRET. As way of an example, In a recent monitoring visit by Ofsted, one such school was praised for the progress that has been made.
- Attainment at KS2 continues to improve across the Trust's network of primary academies.
In addition to its key strategic role, the Trust offers:
- An in-house staff training programme
- Unique enrichment and sporting opportunities
- Access and partnerships with leading organisations, ranging from top universities to Olympic athletes
- Maximum benefit for its academies through economies of scale
- A core team of education, HR, finance, ICT, and communications professionals to support acdemy improvement
- Training programmes for governors
The Trust firmly believes that strong governance is essential to the success of its Academies and this operates at three levels within the organisation. The Trustee Board is responsible for overall strategy and direction and for the quality of its academies. It is supported in this by local governing bodies which are established at each of its academies, and bring local knowledge and insight of the progress of the academy itself and it's relationship with its wider community. The local governing boards work closely with the academy principals to maintain a strategic overview of the academy's operations and the quality of its educational outcomes.
The chairs of governors are represented on the Trust's board to ensure that there is effective and joined up governance.
For more information about the Trust, contact Helen Stevenson at hstevenson@dret.co.uk.
You can also follow us on twitter @DRETnews.
