Become a Maritime School

Why become part of Maritime?

Being a Maritime school means you have support with lots of areas of school life, while giving our leaders autonomy to lead their schools for the best of their communities. We aim for consistency in impact without conformity in approach. We do this by working together in a number of ways. 

Our academies are run by our Headteachers and overseen by the Maritime Trust Board. Maritime provides advice, support, expertise and a strategic overview. 

Having high-quality headteachers, middle/senior leaders and teachers is critical to having great schools. To ensure we provide the best for our children, Maritime has a policy of growing and developing our own leaders of the future with a career pathway from NQT to Headteacher. We offer a range of training programmes for staff within our schools. Maritime provides excellent opportunities for our schools to share good practice, learn from each other and achieve economies of scale.

Why join Maritime?

There are a number of reasons for wanting to join a Multi Academy Trust, particularly Maritime Academy Trust. Some of the main reasons include: 

• Collaboration: Getting to work with outward-facing schools that are always looking to improve.
• Networks: A huge support network that can help develop practice amongst your staff and school through collaboration.
• Knowing what works: We do not try to make schools all the same, we just share what works. For example, some of our schools have uniform, some do not. In one of the schools staff are called by their first names. In the others by their last names.
• Security: Knowing that you will have a larger group ‘looking out for you’ and the support that you can get from the Trust.
• Financial support: As we navigate through these difficult financial times we need to make tough decisions and being in a Trust helps. We have successfully bid for money to support the schools, we share staff which has helped take pressure off of the wage bills, and we do joint procurement which has significantly reduced costs.
• Support at the top: Let’s be honest, being a head can be lonely! However as part of Maritime our headteachers meet regularly to support each other and share excellent practice.
• Autonomy: your school is your school, and we will support you as and where needed. We'll set the parameters of expectations - but how you get there is up to you, you know your school best.
  
  

Having had experience as a Headteacher in a number of Trusts over the past 10 years, it is great to be part of a senior team that values honest feedback and input from its leaders. They recognise that challenge is a two-way process which is very refreshing.

Headteacher - Bligh Primary School

Do not join Maritime if:

• You do not want to reflect on what works and what doesn’t work within your school
• You feel that you don’t want to be supporting others or sharing your successful practices
• You don’t have a good sense of humour
• You are joining to try and dispose of your governing body
• You want a narrow and rigid curriculum