All Saints Catholic Academy Trust

The All Saints Catholic Academy Trust came into being before the Diocesan Academy Strategy was formulated in 2016: St Joan of Arc School in Rickmansworth became an academy and was joined afterwards, as part of the by then up-and-running Diocesan programme, by Divine Saviour, Holy Rood and St John’s primary schools.  More recently, the St John Fisher Primary School has received an Academy Order and will be followed in due course by a Hemel Hempstead hub comprising two primaries – St Albert the Great and St Thomas More – an infant school and nursery, St Rose’s, and a secondary, John F Kennedy.  This would take the number of schools from four to nine, making the ASCAT the second largest CAT, at present, after DOWAT.  Here, Stephen Wheatley, the Executive Head of Holy Rood and Divine Saviour, and the Interim CEO of ASCAT, and Tony Hall, the Headteacher of St John’s, which joined in 2019, give their views on how the CAT has worked.

Stephen, could you explain your own journey from joining ASCAT to assuming the role of Interim CEO?

What benefits have you seen since the CAT was formed, both in general and with regard to operating during the pandemic?

How have things changed for the pupils?

Tony, how has your job changed since joining the CAT?

What advice do you have for anyone considering embarking on the process?

Blessed Holy Family Catholic Academy Trust

The Blessed Holy Family Catholic Academy Trust, which comprises four schools in and around Harrow – St George’s, St John Fisher and St Joseph’s primary schools and the Sacred Heart Language College – formed in May 2019, the first of the Family CATs to come into being following the launch of the Diocesan academy strategy in September 2017.  Its CEO is Geraldine Higgins, head of Sacred Heart.  Here, she and Chris Briggs, the headteacher of St Joseph’s, talk about the formation and working of the CAT.

Could you describe the process of forming the BHFCAT?  How was it and what was the driving motivation?

What benefits have you seen since the CAT was formed, both in general and with regard to operating during the pandemic?

How have things changed for the pupils?

How has your job changed since the CAT was formed?

What advice do you have for anyone considering embarking on the process?

Diocese of Westminster Academy Trust

The Diocese of Westminster Academy Trust is the first and largest of the Diocese’s CATs, founded in 2012 and now comprising eleven schools (five of them primary and six secondary).  In the ten years of its existence, it has consistently been one of the top-ten performing medium-sized MATs nationally.  Here, its CEO, Patrick Murden, and Ciara Nicholson, the Executive Head of Our Lady Catholic Primary School in Hitchin, who also works on the Trust’s central services team, talk about DOWAT’s mission and the part they play in making it a reality.

The schools have a shared strategic vision that we’re all working towards jointly.  In a general and overarching sense, that means that we work collaboratively to share best practice and shape that vision together.  Our like-mindedness creates a sense of unity and so we accelerate together.  There is no sense of isolation as we’re all part of something bigger which we work to nurture.
This has really been to the fore in the pandemic, which we approached as a Trust problem rather than a difficulty for individual schools.  The Trust commissioned health and safety site visits for the schools to offer advice and reassurance about how we were going about things. We also got help from the Trust with centralised Covid policies and templates for our risk assessments.

I was attracted to the post because I saw DOWAT as a beacon of not only of academic distinction, but also as a cathedral of Catholic excellence in a much deeper sense.  So my job is all about securing the best for pupils in DOWAT schools and, by extension, securing the best for the Diocese and the Catholic sector as a whole.  In practice, this means three things: articulating the vision and achieving the mission of the Trust, upholding the best standards across its schools by supporting and challenging headteachers, and maximising the financial resources of the Trust for the benefit of all its children.