How efficient is your trust? Benchmarking holds the answer
- Sophie Hill
- Apr 23, 2025
- 4 min read
Updated: Jun 5, 2025
With 82% of trusts making changes to their operating model - whether to reduce costs, improve quality, prepare for growth or optimise post-merger - evidence-based decision making has never been more essential.
But how do you really know if your trust is operating efficiently? And where can you find the operational data to back up your strategic choices?
Benchmarking is one of the most powerful tools available to trust leaders. At its core, benchmarking is the process of comparing your operational performance with that of peer trusts, bringing an independent, external perspective on how your trust is really performing. Benchmarking highlights key areas such as efficiency, service quality, and internal satisfaction, helping you assess whether you’re getting value for money, and where improvements can be made.
By benchmarking your operations, you can:
Identify strengths and weaknesses: see how your operating model stacks up against similar trusts
Uncover opportunities to improve: find ways to reduce costs, enhance quality and streamline processes
Set achievable goals: ground your targets and KPIs in sector best practice
Support strategic decisions: use real-world data to guide resource allocation
Drive continuous improvement: build a focused roadmap for better operational performance
Engage your board: equip trustees with clear, data-driven insights to support challenge and collaboration
Demonstrate value for money: ensure economy, efficiency, effectiveness and long-term financial sustainability.
Yet despite its value, many trusts struggle to access reliable benchmarking data for operations. There’s plenty of data out there for educational outcomes - but what about the ‘business’ side of running trusts?
That’s why we’ve pulled together the key sources of operational benchmarking data available to trusts today, categorised by the type of source data: accounts and budgeting, surveys and stakeholder views, and end to end process costs and quality.
Accounts and budgeting | Surveys and stakeholder perceptions | End to end process costs and quality | |
What makes a good benchmark?
Benchmarking is a powerful tool for evaluating performance, but its value depends entirely on the quality of the benchmarks themselves. If the data behind a benchmark isn’t consistent or comparable, the insights it generates can be misleading. And that can lead to poor decisions, ineffective strategies, and wasted resources.
At CJK, we’ve spent the last 7 years carefully building a robust and reliable benchmarking dataset, underpinned by four core principles:
Clearly defined metrics: we ensure that every measure is specific, relevant, and standardised. This means that everyone is measuring the same thing in the same way - no ambiguity, no grey areas.
Like-for-like comparisons: our benchmarking data is drawn from a wide range of school trusts, covering different sizes, structures and geographies.
Data integrity: benchmarks are only as strong as the data behind them. We prioritise accuracy, completeness, and recency to ensure the insights are reliable and actionable.
Context matters: Even among similar trusts, external factors - like funding arrangements, educational phase, or areas such as SEND - can have a significant impact. That’s why we interpret benchmarks in context, not in isolation.
CJK Aurora
CJK Aurora is our powerful benchmarking tool designed to give you a structured, evidence-based view of your trust’s operational effectiveness. If offers a systematic review across four critical dimensions: performance, organisation, capabilities, and governance.
Think of it as ICFP for operations - providing the same clarity and strategic insight, but focused on how your trust is run, not just how it's funded.
Using our robust dataset, we benchmark your trust against others of a similar size and structure, giving you a clear, external perspective on how your operations compare.
Each Aurora review includes:
A comprehensive written report that can be shared with trustees, executive leaders, and other stakeholders
A facilitated workshop to help you interpret the findings, identify improvement opportunities, and inform your trust’s strategic planning
Whether you're aiming to increase efficiency, plan for growth, or better understand how to improve your trust’s operations, Aurora helps you move from guesswork to grounded decision-making.
CEO, TKAT
“CJK Associates helped us get a really clear view of our current services. CJK’s benchmarking was really helpful, as was the independent gathering of views from our trustees, headteachers, and operational teams. CJK then supported us to develop a strong framework for moving forwards. They were knowledgeable about the barriers that needed to be overcome, clear about the solutions, and provided us with great direction”.
CEO, Dartmoor Trust
“The work of CJK Associates gave a laser sharp appraisal of our current position in terms of both strategic mapping and operational efficiencies; the proposals emanating have helped us to streamline where needed and to grow functions where this was necessary. An invaluable partnership that has brought better strategic fit and resultingly operational excellence”.
CJK Aurora Community
CJK Aurora Community is our free peer to peer benchmarking service. By joining our benchmarking community, your trust will be able to:
Upload your data and receive a free benchmarking report showing how you compare against other trusts.
Gain valuable insights into organisational structure and performance.
Shape the future of trust operational benchmarking by identifying additional benchmarks that matter to the sector.
Sign up here and join a sector-wide community of operational benchmarking!
For more information on Aurora or any of our services, please contact: sophiehill@cjkassociates.co.
