The Trust

The Vision for The Aylsham Cluster Trust

For 10 years now, schools in the Aylsham Cluster have been working together to transform education for children and families in the Aylsham area. Never have the schools in the Aylsham Cluster been so successful and so popular.

In May 2011 the schools took the decision to cement this transformational relationship by forming a shared Co-operative Trust. The main objective of the Aylsham Cluster Trust is to promote learning and the interests of the family and wider community in the Aylsham area.
Our vision is to develop a network of members who both contribute to and benefit from the work of the Trust in order in order to help our young people, families and ultimately our communities to continue to thrive.

This website is designed to give you an insight into the potential that the Trust has in supporting children, parents, staff and community groups in the Aylsham area.

Our vision is outlined below:

Our collaboration of schools aims to work in partnership with children, young people, their families and local communities, clubs and societies. Together we strive to provide an inspiring range of experiences that aim to raise standards and aspirations and improve opportunities for all.
Our vision is for all children to learn in a rich and stimulating partnership that provides additional opportunities for us to work together creatively.
We endeavor to respect the individuality of the range of schools working within a supportive culture and building on our relationship of trust.
We also aspire to adopt the cooperative values of self-help, self-responsibility, democracy, equality, equity and community solidarity and the ethical values of honesty, openness, trust, social responsibility and caring for others to underpin our collaboration.

Through working together we can continue to become even better and even stronger by creating a lasting and sustainable partnership.

In the first few years of operation we are looking to build an active membership and to begin to build our networks. We need your help to do this.

Key Values – Co-operative Values

The Aylsham Cluster Learning Trust has chosen to adopt a Co-operative Trust model. We have done this because we believe that the greatest energy for change and development comes from within our own communities.

Our work is underpinned by the Co-operative Values:

Self – help- we help people to help themselves
Self – responsibility- we take responsibility for, and answer to our actions
Democracy- we give our members a say in the way we run our organisation
Equality- we are genuinely inclusive and pursue success for everyone
Equity- we carry out our work in a way that is fair and unbiased
Solidarity- we share interests and common purposes with our members and other co-operatives

Our Ethical Values are:

Openness- nobody’s perfect, and we won’t hide it when we’re not
Honesty- we are honest about what we do and the way we do it
Social responsibility- we encourage people to take responsibility for their own community, and work together to improve it
Caring for others- we are a nurturing community that takes care of each other and we regularly support charities and local community groups

To release this energy we need to build a membership of active participants in the Trust who give of their time, energy and expertise to improve provision for children and families.

Our four key membership groups are:

Students
Staff
Parents
Community groups and organisations

Students, staff and parents are all automatically members of our cooperative. The key is to make that membership active through participation in the activities and the work that we do.

For our potential community partners there is a requirement to actively join the cooperative and to take an active role in its development.

Ultimately these groups will have representation on a Forum and on the Trust Board itself. What this means is that we have a genuine commitment to ensuring that our members have the ability to shape the work that we do as a Cluster of Schools.