Academy leader is aiming to drive up standards

Former coal miner Paul Tarn, who has spent the last decade turning around some of the worst performing schools in the country, took up his role as chief executive at the struggling Delta Academies Trust, which is based in Wakefield, just over a year ago.

Over the last 12 months he has overseen major improvements across its 43 schools, including 38 in Yorkshire, and has began working in partnership with Outwood Grange Academies Trust to overhaul education in the North.

Now he has revealed plans to roll-out the strategy further by teaming up with other academy chains.

Mr Tarn, who was previously the deputy chief executive for the fellow Wakefield-based Outwood Grange Academies Trust, one of the country’s highest performing academy chains with 22 schools across the North, said: “Children in the North have some of the worst outcomes in education. Poorly performing schools need to be working closely together, particularly in communities that have suffered from the decline of the mining industry and the manufacturing industries.

“We want to work together across the North of England with like-minded trusts to transform education. We are really serious about looking at a strategy to regenerate education in the North.”

Mr Tarn said the trust, which runs 26 primary schools, 14 secondaries and three “all through” schools across Yorkshire, including Doncaster, Grimsby and Hull, wants to work collaboratively with other trusts and leaders of education to overhaul consistently underperforming schools.

He said: “By doing this we can fix some of the ingrained performances that have marred education in the North for generations. There are schools that continually don’t perform when compared with similar types of schools in the South and it’s about saying what are we going to do about it and if we are really experts in education let’s sort it out.

“Working with the chief executive at Outwood Grange Academies Trust, Martyn Oliver, who is an expert in school improvement, we are developing this. We are already on a journey to do our best in the North but we are interested in talking to other trusts to find out if they are interested in joining us on that journey.”

Mr Tarn said the trust did not have to sponsor schools to help them improve as working with others was key.

He said: “If we are going to operate as a region with HS2 coming in, which will provide an opportunity for us to lead the economy in the North, we have to regenerate education. It’s about preparing the next generation of workers with the right skills. It’s a really exciting time in education and there are opportunities to make a difference - not in isolation but in collaboration with others.”

The Delta Academies Trust, which was completely rebranded in last October, changing its name from the Schools Partnership Trust Academies, was in dire straits when Mr Tarn took over, he explained.

“The trust was in quite a bit of trouble. It had huge financial problems. The standards in the schools weren’t particularly good. We had some outstanding schools, and we still have, but some were among the bottom performing academies in the country,” he said.

Mr Tarn said he believed a good academy trust focussed entirely on performance and outcomes of the children and was not about “collecting schools” to become a large organisation.

“If we can’t improve the outcomes, then we shouldn’t be running the school,” he said.

Over the last 12 months the trust has made a raft of improvements. “Things across the trust are really starting to pick up pace. The school improvement rate is phenomenal and I’m delighted with that,” said Mr Tarn. “There are lots of things you can do when you operate as one big organisation. It means you can really get the benefit of the expertise right the way across the trust.”

After leaving school Mr Tarn became a coal miner at Grimethorpe Colliery, in Barnsley. During the pit closure programme he decided to train and went to night school for four years and then on to university in order to be able to pursue a career in teaching in his late 20s.

After training at Sheffield Hallam he went into teaching starting his first job at City School in Sheffield in 1995. Since then he has risen through the ranks of Outwood Grange Academies Trust leading several schools out of special measures and becoming the trust’s deputy chief executive, before taking up his leadership role at Yorkshire’s biggest acdemy chain in March 2016.

Outwood Grange Academies Trust and Delta Academies Trust have both grown from successful secondary schools - Outwood Grange in Wakefield and Garforth Community College. The two schools converted to academies under Labour and have grown under the coalition and Conservative governments. Both original head teachers Sir Michael Wilkins and Sir Paul Edwards have been knighted for services to education.

However in recent years Outwood Grange Academies Trust, which has grown more slowly, has been more successful.

It has been chosen by the Government as one of five strong performing academy sponsors in the North of England to receive extra funding to convert more schools in struggling areas.

Delta Academies Trust, which was formerly known as School Partnership Trust Academies until it was rebranded last year, was one of the fastest growing academy chains under the coalition. However it was criticised in 2015 by both Ofsted and a Regional Schools Commissioner over standards in some of its secondary schools.