Who needs Clew?

Clew is designed to support educational governance and leadership. Its core rationale is that objectivity rooted in know-how offers the best pathway to progress, risk reduction and crisis resolution.

Challenges and opportunities can present themselves to organisations across the educational landscape:

• Local education authorities and multi-academy trusts
• Governing bodies
• Maintained schools considering academisation or other foundational realignment
• Training providers needing governance structures for Ofsted-readiness
• Educational consultancies and support businesses facing capacity issues.

Clew adds value to those charged with ensuring stability in educational institutions, or responding to emergent crises and challenges.

The Start Point

Clew begins with immersion in your school or college, and the issues it faces.

We don’t know all the answers. But we do know all the questions. We ask them, unblinkingly. And advise unflinchingly.

Clew is proud of its speed of thought. Witness the rapidity of getting to grips with a stricken single academy trust, laid low by an implosion of governance. And the resulting turn-round. View case study #1

We’re also proud of our ability to devise effective solutions, often to seemingly intractable problems.

Strategy is key

If you’ve got a strategy, we can test how robust it is. And if you haven’t, we’ll help you devise one, keeping your objectives central to our thinking.

But we won’t work without one. Because only with a clear-eyed view on what success looks like can Clew do its most effective work. And the one constant? The aim to make you self-reliant as quickly as possible (so that we can help other schools, of course!).

Which is how we were able to drive through the merger of community Infant and neighbouring foundation Junior schools to create a single Primary with a unified, streamlined staff and new Head, all within two years fractured by Covid. View case study #2

The need for a deliverable strategy is particularly pressing as schools begin to contemplate the impact of the pressure to academise.

Sharp creativity

What do we mean by ‘sharp’?

First, it’s inextricably embedded in the strategic spine.

Next, it is strictly to the point. We’re not in the business of suggesting irrelevant, impolitic or undeliverable ideas. When we innovate, it’s desirable and do-able.

And, finally, it works. Whether it’s a seductive ad for a new leader, or co-creating a MAT that meets the pressing needs of its founders.

And for us, ‘creativity’ is as broad as it can possibly be, covering innovative answers to challenges, as much as effective communications to stakeholders of issues and ideas.

Direction & Control

Steering the process, keeping eyes firmly on the goal and hands on the tiller, is a vital part of our offer. Clew clients never feel less than 100% supported.

We know that we are most frequently called upon when something hits, and expertise or capacity don’t match what is needed to bring about resolution.

So, for example, a one-form-entry primary school needing a new Head had no bandwidth or experience to deliver an effective recruitment process. Clew stepped in and took the panel from initial scoping of the ideal candidate all the way through to a successful appointment. Here’s how.

The essence is simply this: Never alone when you need support; always free to take control.

Services

Rather than an exhaustive menu, here’s our broad ‘3is’ service offer.

INSPECTION:

As self-reviewing governance is hard, we bring objectivity to assessing frameworks and performance, with a single clear goal: optimised governance. Clew can also steer boards through a wholesale re-engineering of their governance model and its structures.

ISSUES:

Boards face a range of predictable issues, such as strategic review, risk management, skills auditing, adequacy of data, and succession planning. Clew helps identify robust processes, critical paths and potential pitfalls, guiding governing bodies through crisis avoidance, improvement, and transformation.

INTERVENTION:

Boards also face the unpredictable. Our team is built for rapid deployment in the event of a crisis, or because something outside the comfort zone of trustees and governors has hit. Case study #1 is a perfect example.

The Clew Family

‘Clew’ is an old word for the thread that Ariadne gave Theseus so he could safely find his way through the Cretan Labyrinth. We believe that, with Clew Education in your toolkit, you will have a number of options on the way to sustainable stability and governance excellence.

Its founder, Ian Phillips, is a serial Chair and trouble-shooter, an ex-National Leader of Governance with a deep and broad track-record, including crisis resolution, governance improvement, and strategic leadership, as well as chairing disciplinary and exclusion panels. Click here for a timeline of his experience.

Since the publication of his book on how to be a great Governor or/and Trustee, Ian has been invited to speak on various platforms and contribute articles about serving on governing boards.

London Governance is a full-service consultancy, providing seamless advice and support all the way from arranging and minuting meetings through governor recruitment to the planning and conduct of exclusion panels.

Clerks for London is a specialist company delivering clerking services for schools and colleges of every foundation status from meeting admin through minuting to compliance (www.clerksoflondon.com).

What’s more, Clew has a wide network of other specialists – lawyers, accountants, investigators, trainers – who are immersed in the world of education and can deliver high value advice and assistance.

Testimonials