St James’ CE Primary is part of Sphere Federation, alongside Scholes (Elmet) Primary and Moortown Primary.
Sphere Federation was formed in September 2016. David Roundtree is the Head of Federation (sometimes called the ‘executive headteacher’). Whilst he is the named headteacher of all three schools within Sphere, each school has a Head of School, too. Other leaders work across Sphere to share skills and expertise – see our Who’s Who page.
A federation is where a number of state schools overseen by a local authority come together under a single over-arching governing board. This becomes the accountable body for all the schools and sets the strategic direction for the group. Over 1000 schools are part of a federation in England.
Federation provides maintained schools with the opportunity to form a group – without incurring legal costs – in order to improve the education of pupils. This enables governors and school leaders to focus on forming relationships between schools first, and then joint leadership, governance and business management. This can be done while still remaining a maintained school, so the process is much more focused on relationship building and producing tangible outcomes for pupils, instead of being dominated by legal changes in charity/company status and land ownership.
St James’ CE Primary, Scholes (Elmet) Primary and Moortown Primary are relatively small schools. Federations are often formed to improve capacity for smaller schools.
School federations provide lots of opportunities:
- opportunities to work together efficiently and sustainably to raise standards
- opportunities to improve services and increase opportunities for pupils and staff
- opportunities to share resources, staff, expertise and facilities
…and therefore lots of benefits:
- excellent training and development for teachers
- knowledge , expertise and ideas are shared
- discounts and deals with suppliers can be negotiated
The National Governance Association lists additional advantages for schools.
The school ensures that staff receive regular, high-quality training and development. This contributes to staff having excellent subject knowledge across a range of subjects. Membership of the federation brings considerable strengths. Staff benefit from leadership development opportunities that arise from their work across different schools.
(Ofsted inspection, 2025)