Twinkl feature interview with Peter Knight from Trinity MAT

We're delighted to share the third in our series of blogs, working alongside Twinkl, that focus on celebrating professionals from the schools management sector. This time, Crysp’s CEO, Pete Mills talks to Peter Knight, Chief Operating Officer at Trinity Multi-Academy Trust, about how digitising compliance has helped the trust face challenges in the education sector.

Read the Twinkl blog 'How Digitising Compliance Can Help Academies Grow in Challenging Times' for a summary of Pete and Peter's interview.

Or read the full-in depth interview below:

Pete Mills: Well, thank you for joining us this morning, Peter. So, big question. How did you end up being Chief Operating Officer of Trinity MAT?

Peter Knight: That's a very big question. I started my career in the civil service and ended up working quite heavily in Whitehall in London for a long period of time. It was just a life of opportunity. I'm originally from Durham and wanted to return north. I have a very dear friend who lives in Hebden Bridge, who said, “Why don't you come up here?” I found the job locally, made inquiries and applied and was successful. So I've landed here in West Yorkshire, with Trinity MAT!

We have 10 schools across five local authorities at the moment. Broadly, we're an expanding MAT. So I felt this was probably a good position, for me from my last job, intending to retire after this. I wanted to make an impact, particularly with the ability of education providers, to really make a difference to pupils and students that are in our care. For me, this particular job was about, how do I make the lives of the educators as smooth as possible? And how do I take away all of the things that we have to legally do? Handle from the state's point of view, handle from a point of view of compliance, a point of view of marketing, and a point of view of just generally trying to make sure that a principal doesn't have to think about some of these things. Clear their desk for them.

Pete Mills:  And I guess that leads us into that direction of travel, really, for the trust because you are, in one respect, quite an unusual trust. With White Rose Maths, what they're doing, and you've spun that out. And the pace of which, certainly from an outside perspective, the pace of which you're moving. So, in terms of the direction of travel, for the trust, in the next three to five years, what's the plan?

Peter Knight: Well, the plan is very much to grow the organisation. And we are sort of looking at almost three-fold increase. So 30 schools, not 10. We're looking to have probably around 3,500 staff, not just over 1000, and we're looking to make impact into more than 15,000 people and student lives. We've also got an ambition to look overseas, and look at education there. And, of course, White Rose continues to be a jewel in our crown in the sense of provision of services for curriculum. Particularly in maths and now moving into science. 

So for me, we've got a very clear plan of where we want to go, we've got a very clear set of aims in terms of what we want to achieve. And I think that, fundamentally, everything that we do comes back to the impact for children. And I think as long as we've got that as our focus, we can't really go wrong.

Pete Mills: And you do feel that particular impact for children. You feel like the trust is it delivering on what you would hope?

Peter Knight: Well, absolutely. I mean, the last two Ofsted were outstanding. Bearing in mind, both of those schools that we had brokered into the organisation, and they were failing. You know, that's a tremendous turnaround and a fantastic credit to the teams out in each of the academies there. 

I think the other part about it is we've successfully delivered two free schools. And we did it to time to budget and opened when we're supposed to. And I think, again, we've got that ability to do that type of work.

And I guess a bit of my civil service background has helped with the processes. Because, that means we've got a very strong ability to manage processes, manage projects, deliver these facilities, and then also ramp up the school. Both of those schools got the top rating Ofsted for opening new schools basically for the initial period. So they will be revisited in about three years' time. And then we'll see where we get to that point.

Pete Mills: Fantastic. You mentioned just there something from the civil service and I was really intrigued by that. Because we know each other out of this context, I've got a bit of a picture of your civil service background, which is fascinating. What lessons have you drawn from that in this role? And how are you bringing that life into this one?

Peter Knight: So I am a traditional civil servant, I suppose that it can be viewed as a good or a bad thing. I view it as a good thing because bureaucracy isn't a bad thing. It just needs to be effective bureaucracy, because you need checks and balances in the system. And as long as the bureaucracy is proportionate, and it's fluid and works, then I'm pretty, pretty happy with that. I think what it does do is it brings discipline as well. So from a project point of view, we can nail things down a lot clearer. From a policy point of view, it means that we can look at policies. And when I arrived, we did, we've delivered over the period last nearly three years. We’ve done our policy review, and we've streamlined our policies. So there are things that are statutory, and things that are non-statutory, but we've tried to structure them so that you have a MAT based policy. Then if you need local variation, you have a MAT with a dependency mechanism. And if you then need a real school policy, we'll try to minimise that bottom layer. And what that's done is consolidated quite a lot of the policy management. It just means then we can handle what we're doing, basically.

Pete Mills: Before I jump into a bit more on the good culture piece, just what are the challenges that you're facing? On the back of everything that seems to be going on right now, when you read the news, you can't get away from the cost of living crisis, you can't get away from the energy crisis, and other sorts of pressures around care and education crisis. How are you cutting through that as a management team?

Peter Knight: I think there are two main things that are impacting our position, and they are both financially related at the moment. So there's the cost of living crisis in terms of energy costs and we've seen more than threefold, sometimes 300% increase in energy costs. That's something that we have to manage basically. Now, you hear in the news, there's a lot of pressure around this, and you're going to see a number of schools, not us at the moment, but a number of schools run out of cash. And as soon as they run out of cash, they become unviable as a business. I think that's going to be interesting. Where it's local authority maintained, there has to be some level of intervention and if there isn't, then there's going to be a consolidation of schools or schools will transfer into MATs. 

The purpose of being in a MAT for us is it gives us a little bit more security and control. But if this persisted, as an example, and the government hadn't announced their 2.3 billion for the next couple of years investments, on top of the 7 billion they're going to kick in for the next four years from next year, then I think we would be in we would be in a situation like everybody else running out of cash. 

So the issue to do with cash in the world of utilities is one thing, but on top of that, of course, is unprecedented pay rises at the moment. And whilst, people could see they're needed in some respect, the question is, are they affordable? This kind of goes to the macroeconomics of these things. If we continue with these levels of pay request, I think inflation on a macro scale is going to be a problem. We need to control the wage model basically. So for us, it's just making sure what's out of our control, we try to at least mitigate going forward, but some of these things are quite unprecedented at the moment.

Pete Mills: So moving on to cultural aspects which is something which we've talked a lot about. I know from working with you Peter, that's a very important aspect - how do we create a good culture of compliance and safety? What's your bag of magic tricks to make that happen?

Peter Knight:I don’t think I’ve got bag of magic tricks, but I think for me, there's one thing about compliance and adherence to legislation, is that if you do it and you do it well you’ll come out the other side in a good position. It also means that what you're prepared to do is do it at the very base level with everybody, from the person who cleans the school right the way to the CEO. I think we have a very strong culture here, particularly of being compliant and ensuring compliance, and we're very systematic about it. Where there are issues, we'll deal with them. We're not allowing them to fester. 

So an example, when we introduced Crysp, as you know, our preventative maintenance wasn't as well tuned as it is now. Those are very important aspects for the buildings part of the world. We also think our policy management, which is another aspect we’ve worked with you to develop, is very much around ensuring a line of sight. So my concern in all of that has always been, “I tell you, you have to read a policy, you say you read it, and then effectively you don't read it and something goes wrong,” then we've got no line of sight or audit trail on that. What we have now is a process that says, “you're expected to read it, and we know you've read it because you tick to say you have, and we've also asked you do you understand it yes or no.”

I think by putting those bits of process in place, you're making people accountable for their actions. So there's a very clear line of sight on that. We did the same with training as an example. So mandatory training, we ensure everybody does it, everybody is tested on their knowledge, and then we provide a certificate each year. What that gives us is that security that I know everybody has gone through that process. If somebody fails one of those, then we can do management intervention, we can do some form of further training, further support, and then ensure that the individual understands their responsibility. I think as a culture, we have this both corporate but individual responsibility and everybody adheres to that because actually, it's good practice.  I think, where people may deviate from it, we've got a culture of challenge. And I think that's really important as well.

Pete Mills: So, listening to that, from an outside perspective, why would you need something like Crysp? Because you are a very well run operation and as you said, Ofsted outstanding. Plus, you've come in and you've added another layer to all of that anyway, through your background. So why did you need something like Crysp?

Peter Knight: I'll illustrate it with a slightly different model of things. So we have something called the central staff record, and it's a legal requirement. And when I first came into this organisation, it was run on spreadsheets. That system, for me was not something I could have a line of sight on, be confident that we were compliant, or basically operate in a way where I could sleep at night. So like, Crysp we introduced a system like that, to manage it centrally and I think what that's done is has given this line of sight. And it's given us the ability to say, “I know we are compliant.” 

What Crysp does is exactly the same thing. Now we had a previous system, which wasn't well-used. I think the thing that's different with Crysp, is it's more intuitive, and it's easier to set up and operate. What I'm interested in is systems that are intuitive, that work for the organisation, not systems that impose bureaucracy that's not needed. Actually, that's part of the decision for Crysp. It's the fact that we've got a system that operates, that flags, that has all the things that if I go on and log in and have a look and see if there's a red and I can drill down and go, “why is that red? Why has somebody not done something?” 

For me, I think that's a really important view of the world because, what we need to be able to do is assure. With the SCR (Single Central Record), we can assure because that's an Ofsted element of checking. If the Health and Safety Executive came in and did any audits on us, we've got Crysp, and we can demonstrate what we've got in terms of compliance. I think that's the sort of level of compliance model I'm interested in. Because that way, there's a line of sight in everything, and you're not missing anything. Also, you can spot where people aren't perhaps doing things to plan, and then you can put very good interventions in.

Pete Mills: So in the spirit of what we've started with our industry partnership, which is a term we’re working out, but we’re with you in the schools and developing something that really works. And what Crysp is passionate about is financial. I don't think schools should be burdened with expensive software. That's something I feel quite strongly about. And another, something related to that, is that we free up educators' time because they shouldn't be spending loads of time logging into stuff and things being complicated. So that's where we kind of resonate, and then actually giving people access to employment or opportunities, and whatever it might be from that perspective. There's also this idea that, from an industry perspective, that because you're doing the job every day, you're seeing opportunities that we might not necessarily see. So Crysp was really interested in working with Trinity, and looking at that future piece. 

So, just for people listening to this, what are you seeing as those future opportunities that our respective organisations can work on together? But also, other trusts might be thinking about this, or could it be something they might not have thought to take advantage of?

Peter Knight: Yeah, I think it's interesting because I think compliance goes across the board in lots of different ways. We've dealt with buildings compliance, and the policy and compliance piece. We've also got the contract register, which I think is a good starting point for the world looking at when contracts are due to renew, when they are falling to the end of their life, and what's the notice periods and things. So those elements are where we are today. 

For me, I think the future is very much around how do you bring together things like data protection and information governance. When you do this as a single organisation, you can do it all on spreadsheets. When you do it as maybe three or four schools, you need a tighter regime. 

When you start getting into the realms we’re in, then we need a centralised platform for doing this. So I'm interested in things like law enforcement requirements for disclosure. I'm interested in breach management. I'm interested in subject access request management. I'm very interested in how we deal with complaints management as well. And the reality is that actually, it's run on spreadsheets at the moment, and I need it to be run on a system. So for me, I want to widen the things that we have to comply to, into that sort of remit and process. 

For that, I've done some market research around this, and the platforms out there currently are either good at one element of it, but don't do the others. For me, that's not what we need, we need something that does everything. Therefore, through this partnership we've created, I think, we will start to develop those appliances. If I put my old world hat on and think about some of the research I was involved with, back in the civil service, when you can apply something like AI models across compliance, you can start to look for trends, and you can start to look for patterns. Also, you can start to look at earlier interventions and start to flag those as a way of thinking going forward. Because, what this sort of platform gives me is the ability to report, which is great, it gives me business intelligence, which is great. But what AI does is it gives you the capacity to process information and thinking in terms of the data it's working across rapidly. 

I remember, going back to some health research stuff I was involved with, a platform might look at something that you designed to look for correlations, and it's 10 an hour. But if you can massively scale it into AI, you can get to 1000s an hour. I think, for me, it's using those technology pieces to apply into the system, and really allow us to understand some of these things. So for instance, “do we have hotspots in organisations, where we know there are falls or slips or trips?” We kind of know it in reporting terms, but do we know what happened before that? Were there any correlations to that? And I think that's, that's something we could easily develop forward.

Pete Mills: Yeah. That's really exciting to hear. We've talked a lot about that and it's certainly something I wake up every day and think about and where we could head with it. So that's, that's really exciting. 

So, to wrap up this part of the conversation, for people that have been inspired listening to you this morning and talking about some of these things; if it’s someone coming into the role, if it's somebody already in the role, what top tips would you give them?

Peter Knight: Well, I think there's several top tips. The first is don't be overwhelmed by the role. There's a lot to do. But actually, it's reasonably straightforward. There's a lot of good processes out there. Don't reinvent the wheel when you don't need to. I think, try and do things where there's proportionality in it. So what you don't end up doing is something which is over burdensome. 

I think the other thing is, if it isn't broken, don't break it. And we have a tendency to look at something and say, “Oh, does not working right.” Actually, when you analyse it, it's working perfectly right. So don't break it, if it's working right. Trust in it. Also, you won't solve everything overnight, you need to do it in a systematic way. I think putting some of the disciplines that you can put in like project management, like policy management, like good review and cross-check of compliance. Then you can start to ease the burden for the frontline, but also you can have a proper auditable line of sight on all these things. We found that that's been a godsend in lots of ways, particularly when we've implemented new things. Just as an example, cybersecurity, we had a great audit, we had 11 recommendations, which have really improved our position as an organisation. And you’ve not got to be frightened of these things, I think they're really helpful tools.

I think one of the most important things is, when you're in an industry partnership, you need to make that partnership work. And you know, we've got a very good, healthy relationship on this. I think it's getting people who've got the same alignment. When I come to talk to you, Pete, and we talk about the development of Crysp, we have that alignment. I think those are really important parts of the world we live in these days, and actually working together as a major factor in all of that. And I’ll just say it's been a pleasure to implement Crysp and think about the future of it.

Pete Mills:  Thank you, Peter. And likewise! I think, from our perspective, working with you has been excellent. You've certainly helped us on our journey, and continue to do so in terms of just what does that landscape look like and the challenges faced. I often refer to you as our poster child client, so it's all good. Well let's leave it there and thank you very much for your time this morning.

Read Crysp’s Health & Safety in Schools: Guide to Compliance for more info about how to simplify the process.