OWN Trust

The Trust, managing only three schools, faced a challenge common to smaller educational organisations—how to expand and scale effectively. The leadership team recognised that for the Trust to grow, it would need to prove its capacity to handle additional schools while maintaining or improving the quality of education and support it currently provides.

The Trust’s key challenge was demonstrating to the Regional Director that it had the necessary systems, infrastructure, and internal capacity in place to expand. This required an external evaluation against the Trust Descriptors, a set of standards used to assess the readiness of trusts to take on new schools.

Why the Trust Sought Support from EPM:

To address this challenge, the Trust sought external support from EPM. The reasons for this decision included:

• Expertise in Readiness Assessments: EPM offered a “Readiness to Grow” report based on seven key pillars that closely aligned with the five pillars outlined in the Trust Descriptors.
• Objective and Unbiased Evaluation: The Trust wanted an external, impartial assessment of its readiness to scale. EPM’s expertise would provide us with an unbiased evaluation, offering credibility and assurance to the Regional Director that growth was both feasible and manageable.