Why do our schools choose to be part of the Go Shine Federation?

Go Shine Federation schools have more capacity, expertise and sustainability than individual one-form entry schools. This enables them to be highly effective in terms of providing a great quality of education for children. The greater scale allows the Go Shine Federation schools to offer better opportunities for staff development and progression. This helps retain high quality staff and is attractive to new staff when recruiting.

The significant numbers of staff working in the Go Shine Federation means that there are more excellent teachers (curriculum teams) to write and keep the curriculum under constant review. All curriculum planning is developed across the federation which, not only significantly reduces workload for individual teachers, but also ensures it is of the highest quality.

In addition, Go Shine Federation schools grow expertise in leadership through shared working across the schools. This helps the schools develop and retain staff.

Go Shine Federation schools attract ambitious staff who are seeking an organisation that can provide them with coaching, mentoring and the ability to develop their professional expertise. Leaders of the future want to work in these schools because they are well supported in managing the challenges leadership brings and they are not working alone.

Go Shine Federation schools maintain their highly effective culture when leaders move on because they are able to grow their own leaders for the future. These people absolutely understand how the best schools operate and have often had a long apprenticeship within the organisation. When these ‘home grown’ staff are appointed to senior leadership roles, pupils, staff and parents are confident that the school will continue to excel.

What is a Federation?

A federation is a partnership of local authority maintained schools operating under the governance of a single governing body.

Each federated school is treated as an individual school, meaning it-

• keeps its existing DfE category, and does not gain, lose or change its religious character through being part of a federation;
• continues to have its admissions determined by the appropriate admission authority;
• will receive individual budgets; and
• is inspected individually by Ofsted.