Against the DFE Trust Quality Descriptors (TQD)
– Evaluate your trust against a prompt based TQD framework –
– Identify your strengths/strategic development areas for improvement planning –
– Track over time with no cost and no commitment –
Why evaluate your trust against the Trust Quality Descriptions (TQD)?
1. A clear framework for improvement and strategic planning
The TQD provides a structured self-evaluation framework, helping you identify your trust’s strengths and areas for development with clarity. It enables you to prioritise what matters most, shape a focused strategic plan, and translate this into practical annual action plans.
Progress can then be consistently reviewed by executive leaders and the board, ensuring accountability and sustained improvement over time. This is the foundation of becoming a strong, high-performing trust.
2. Preparing for future inspection and system expectations
The Department for Education has confirmed that multi-academy trust inspections are expected to begin from 2027, with the framework likely aligned to an updated version of the TQD.
Alongside this, there is a clear system-wide ambition to identify and grow “strong trusts”, with the long-term direction that all schools should be part of one.
Evaluating your trust against the TQD now puts you ahead of this shift – aligning your internal approach with the direction of travel across the sector.
The Self Evaluation Process
1
Start with a ready-built framework
Get started instantly with our pre-built Trust Quality Descriptors (TQD) framework. There’s nothing to design – simply begin evaluating your trust against a clear, structured set of standards.
2
Gather perspectives across your trust
Capture insights from executive and non-executive leaders through guided prompts and structured forms. This ensures every perspective is recorded consistently, in one place.
3
Build a shared understanding
Responses are automatically brought together into clear summaries and reports, helping you compare viewpoints and develop a collective understanding of your trust’s current position.
4
Turn insight into direction
Use these outputs to identify strengths, highlight priorities, and inform strategic planning – giving your leadership team a confident, evidence-based starting point.
5
Review and track progress over time
Repeat the process annually to measure progress, maintain focus, and demonstrate improvement to executive leaders and the board.
Why Flourish for Multi-Academy Trusts?
Effective trust-wide improvement starts with a clear understanding of your current position. Yet in many trusts, evaluation is fragmented; approaches differ between schools, and bringing insight together into a coherent picture is difficult.
Flourish gives you a simple, strategic starting point.
By focusing initially at trust level, you can establish a shared language of quality, evaluate against a consistent set of descriptors, and build a joined-up view of strengths and priorities across your organisation.
This allows you to lead improvement deliberately and strategically – rather than reacting to disconnected information.
Start at trust level, then scale with confidence.
Flourish gives you the space to test and refine your approach with your executive team before introducing it more widely. If you choose to roll out across schools, you can do so with clarity, consistency, and a well-defined direction.
What's Included?
Trust Quality Descriptors
Get started instantly with our pre-built Trust Quality Descriptors framework . Evaluate your trust against a clear, structured set of standards and capture insights in one place, giving you a consistent, trust-wide view of quality without needing to design anything yourself.
Up to 10 Users
Invite up to 10 colleagues from across your Trust, including executive leaders, principals, and non-executive board members. Users can sign in quickly using Microsoft or Google accounts, making it easy to get started without setup or training.
Insights and Reporting
Turn your evaluations into clear, actionable insight. Flourish provides heat maps, charts and summaries to help you identify strengths, patterns and priorities across your trust. Compare executive and non-executive perspectives all in one place, with no manual data collation required.
What’s not included:
❌ School-level evaluation
❌ Admin customisation
No cost. No commitment. No pressure.
Start Your Trust-Wide QA and Development Journey Today
Put quality assurance and professional growth at the heart of your trust’s improvement strategy.
Free to Get Started
Start using Flourish at trust level completely free. No contracts, no commitment, just a simple way to evaluate your trust and begin building a clearer picture of quality across your organisation.
Quick and Easy Setup
We’ll set everything up for you, including your Trust Quality Descriptors form. Simply send over your users and you’ll be ready to go – no training, configuration or technical setup required.
No Pressure to Roll Out
Use Flourish at trust level for as long as you like. When you’re ready, you can choose to roll out to your schools – but there’s no expectation or obligation to do so.