Swalecliffe - A Co-operative Trust Foundation School

On 1st July 2016, on our school sports day, we announced that we had become a Co-operative Trust Foundation School. In so doing, we formalised the existing excellent relationship with local schools forming the ‘Coastal Alliance Co-operative Trust’.

Our rationale for doing so was as follows:

We want to continue to raise expectations and standards in the school and improve the future prospects for all of our learners.

1. To do this - with the many changes taking place in education - we need to build strong partnerships and make our school improvement planning more sustainable. 
2. We believe that to meet the needs of our community, we can achieve more through formal education partnerships than we will be able to by working alone.
3. The Coastal Alliance Co-operative Trust - 
   • establishes a formal partnership and allows us to work with other co-operative schools
   • underpins the values of the school, which are in line with universal co-operative values; and
   • helps us to deliver our school’s vision and aims
4. The rationale for acquiring the Trust, the contribution it makes, and the direction it provides to the schools can be summarised as follows:

The Trust builds on the existing relationship between local schools and supports the schools in seeking to:

• Improve the quality of learning and teaching
• Improve the wellbeing and behaviour of our young people
• Enhance capacity by sharing resources and expertise
• Improve value for money in a time of real terms reduction in funding
• Support and develop current and future leaders

Trust schools are part of the local authority system, but supported by a charitable trust represented by our governing body. The governing body continues to run the school, handle the school budget and be responsible for the performance of the school. The Trust provides additional resources and expertise.

Shared Values

The Co-operative values are: self help; self responsibility; democracy; equality; equity; and solidarity.

As members of the Coastal Alliance Co-operative Trust, we work to embody these values at Trust and school level.

Members of the Trust will therefore:

• Give equal value to all our members and all our young people (Equality).
• Have a responsibility to help other schools (Self Help).
• Be accountable for our own actions (Self Responsibility).
• Abide by democratic principles and give a voice to the Whitstable and Herne Bay community and young people (Democracy).
• Make a positive contribution to the trust and local community (Equity).
• Support and improve all our schools by working together (Solidarity).

In our school, we will therefore:

• Make sure we are socially and academically inclusive, and that we teach respect and tolerance (Equality).
• Encourage independence in our children’s problem-solving skills (Self Help).
• Ensure our children understand the balance of rights and responsibilities (Self Responsibility).
• Ensure we listen to our children, our School Council, our parents and carers, our staff and our local community, and hold elections and votes in school, so children experience the democratic process (Democracy).
• Encourage children to recognise the need to contribute to, as well as benefit from, school (Equity).
• Encourage all our community to work together and our children to work as a team, supporting one another and taking pride in their school (Solidarity)​.

​These values closely match our own school vision and wider British Values.

Members of the Trust are as follows:-

Primary Schools	Other Partners
Swalecliffe Community Primary School	East Kent Learning Alliance
Joy Lane Primary, Nursery School and Oysters SRP (ASD)	Coastal Children's Centres
Whitstable Junior School	Herne Bay High
Briary Primary School	Co-Operative Schools Network
Herne Bay Infant School	Archbishop's
Herne Bay Junior School
Herne CE Infant & Nursery School
Herne CE Junior School
Reculver CE Primary School
St Alphege CE Infant School
St Marys Catholic Primary School
Westmeads Community Infant School
Whitstable Endowed CE Junior School

(Foundation Trust Schools are in Bold)