DMAT responds to parents after consultation

Parents and carers of pupils who attend schools within the Dartmoor Multi Acadamy Trust breathed a sigh of relief recently when they received an update from Trust Leader, Dan Morrow, after the consultation closed on staffing. The original proposals included axing Teaching Assistants from Year 3 upwards, restructuring the administration of schools and creating more management positions.

These proposals lead to outrage within the communities, with parents holding their own meetings to come up with ideas to stop the redundancies and a peaceful protest was held in Okehampton.

The letter from the Trust reads as follows:

As you may know, over the past few weeks, Dartmoor Multi Academy Trust (DMAT) has been in consultation with staff on staffing restructure proposals.

We are doing this for a number of reasons. National economic and budgetary pressures mean we have had to explore this wide-ranging change to our staffing structures, particularly in order to ensure the long-term viability of our smaller schools. Without this, or the ability of the trust to combine resources to be used across our schools, there would have been risks to the future of some of our wonderful schools. This is a challenge for small village schools around the country. Yet beyond this, we have explored these changes to help ensure the best possible educational outcomes for our students. There is an increased need for specialised SEND support in our classrooms. Moreover, the new structure we are proposing would see every student receive the continued support of a qualified teacher, and the consistent support of a senior leader within their schools. These are incredibly important factors, and we hope they will make sure pupils from all backgrounds are able to succeed.

We have looked carefully at all aspects of provision and also listened and noted the feedback we have received. The process of consultation allowed for a significant amount of input, comment, reflection and challenge from staff members and colleagues, from Union representatives and wider stakeholders, and we would like to thank everyone for their active engagement in this.

From the outset, this has been a sensitive HR and employment process, not a public consultation. However, given our schools are so clearly and rightly embedded within our communities, we have understood the need to widen our communication to include parents and carers, ensuring that we are operating with the maximum openness and transparency appropriate to the sensitivities of the process itself. We wanted to therefore take the opportunity to outline these changes in a clear and transparent way, as we are concerned there continues to be a high level of misunderstanding surrounding the changes.

As a result of the process, a number of changes and amendments have been made to the original proposals; in each instance finding a balance between the financial responsibility of the Trust and the provision required to ensure a high-quality education for our students.

Thanks to constructive discussions with potentially affected staff, the continued exploring of internal restructures within the central trust, and a substantial saving secured thanks to a new trust-wide energy contract, which will save our schools more than £950,000 combined across the year, from October 2023, there has been a significant reduction in the number of staff roles at risk of redundancy.

To provide more detail:

•Though the equivalent of roughly 50 roles were initially at risk, this has now reduced to around 25 (taking into account the differences between full-time and part-time roles). It

should be noted that many of these staff have the opportunity of redeployment across our Family of schools and the overall reduction in headcount is approximately 3% of current

staffing levels.

•TA and HLTA support will now be guaranteed in the mornings for children in the mixed age Year 3 to 6 classes at Key Stage 2 and continue to be in place throughout the day for those in Key Stage 1.

•There will be significantly fewer reductions to the number of secondary technician roles in our secondaries.

•This consultation has never sought to expand executive leadership at a central trust level. In fact, as a result of these proposals, a vacant executive-level position will not be re-filled and others deleted, and the trust has worked hard to be as efficient as possible across the past

few years. The increase in leadership discussed in the proposals solely refers to the principals and senior-level support within our schools and their wider local hubs. As we have said, we want to provide every school with consistent leadership and stability; something that will benefit both staff and students.

We will now begin the process of matching staff to available roles, so are unable to speculate on individual circumstances at this stage and would like to emphasise that this is still a sensitive HR and employment process. We will update you once this process is complete, as at that stage, we will be in a position to confirm any effects of the restructure on individual schools.

We fully understand and appreciate how important our schools are to their communities. We share every parent’s desire to provide the best possible education for the children of Dartmoor. We would like to thank everyone who submitted their feedback, the vast majority of which was presented in an honest, constructive and helpful way. As a direct result, we have managed to find innovative and progressive solutions together as a united team.'

We hope you can recognise that we all have the same high ambitions for our schools, and we are committed to working with you to achieve these in order to give our students the education they so very much deserve.

Yours sincerely

Dan Morrow Trust Leader & CEO

Susanne Kiff Deputy Trust Leader & CFOO

Tania Skeaping Chair of Trust on behalf of the Board