From Leaton Gray, S and Whitty, G (2007) "Comprehensive schooling and social inequality in London: past, present, and possible future" in Brighouse, T and Fullick, L (Eds) Education in a Global City: Essays from London (London, Institute of Education)
Trust schools are felt by the Government to provide a new way in which schools can achieve sufficient flexibility and freedom to transform standards, for example by having autonomy from local authorities in managing buildings and resources.
Potentially, there are four types of trusts A single school may opt to become a trust school and indeed some voluntary aided and foundation schools already have trusts. Secondly, a single underachieving school may be given a trust as a means of relaunching the governing body and recruiting a new leader. Thirdly, it is possible to have collaborative trusts running groups of schools or linking a secondary and a local primary school, giving an ?all-through? model of education to minimize the difficulties of secondary transfer. Finally, it is possible to have a nationwide trust, such as the United Learning Trust, which was created to manage a number of faith-based academies throughout the country.
There is a risk that the first two types of trust may result in the relative isolation of individual schools from local provision. This has been the case with earlier forms of autonomous schools, such as city technology colleges and, as we have seen, academies (Whitty, Edwards and Gewirtz, 1993; Rogers and Migniuolo, 2007). Additionally the reduction in the influence of the local authority raises questions about accountability, as there are few apparent controls over governing bodies of trust schools. These issues and other similar ones may account for the reluctance of education professionals to engage with the process. Indeed, a recent poll of 505 secondary head teachers and deputies suggested that only 5% are actively considering trust status for their schools, despite inducements of £10,000 to encourage schools to become involved (Association of School and College Leaders, 2007).
Nevertheless, the other types of trust may have greater potential to contribute to the improvement of the system as a whole. In his announcement in 2006, Johnson suggested that the government would be particularly interested in collaborative trusts, though not to the exclusion of other types. Within the trust model, schools can work together and with outside organisations, such as charities, businesses and universities, as a way of extending collaboration . Trusts therefore may offer some scope to address social inclusion issues through formalized collaboration arrangements and, in doing so, may usefully become linked to other initiatives, such as federations and extended schools.