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Aim 1 - Education ...................................................................................................................................................... 12
With the increasing number of responsibilities and expectations placed upon schools, some of which would be better addressed by other agencies, it is a danger that our core purpose is marginalised. Our core purpose is to educate young people and that is why it has to be Aim 1.
Despite the significant challenges faced last year, a considerable amount of work was undertaken towards achieving this objective. Sadly, developmental work with Ambition Institute and their ‘Transforming Teaching’ programme was unavoidably derailed in 2019-20 but staff still built on the principles of this to develop their practice. We also saw an increasing number of staff undertaking formal professional development qualifications so that they were personally in a position to better contribute towards meeting this objective.
Our Trust Leader for Curriculum (11-19) in 2020-21, Steve Hall of Pingle Academy, led on a significant amount of organisational work to ensure that progress was made towards meeting this objective. Our Trust Subject Leaders worked industriously with their colleagues across our secondary schools to share best practice and build on our journey towards excellence and consistency.
Our Director of Primary Education, Nicki Bell, worked with the Principals and staff of our primary schools to work towards developing our curricula and increasing consistency and alignment.
While there is still a considerable amount of work to be done to fulfil this objective, significant steps have been made. 1.7 Use evidence and technology to inform practice
The Trust made a large investment in ensuring that our teachers were in the best position they could be to teach their pupils remotely. Teachers showed their resilience and ability to adapt by quickly coming to terms with teaching by Zoom. Pupils played their own part in this with expectations of their organisational and independent study skills rising considerably. Non-teaching staff also had to adapt to a new world of remote meetings and embracing the use of technologies that had previously been unknown to them.
Our Trust Leader for Digital Strategy, Greg Hughes of The de Ferrers Academy, used his extensive expertise and experience to support and guide colleagues, ensuring that good progress was made towards this objective.
Key foci within this Aim for 2021-22
1.2 Ensure that pupils have access to appropriate curricular and extracurricular provision
1.3 Implement fair and robust standardised systems of progress tracking and quality assurance of staff and students
1.5 Create informative and illustrative crosstrust management information
Aim 2 People
During a period of time where our people had to go above and beyond their roles, staff have showed determination and resilience through one of the most difficult periods in their careers.
During this time, we have continued with our commitment to drive areas forward to support all of our staff to gain the right people in the right places at the right time.
2.3 Develop appropriate and personalised CPD pathways for all members of staff
Despite a number of closure periods and remote working conditions, our support staff fully engaged in our cross-trust project to design a better solution for performance management which was welcomed.
Support staff met in their cross-trust working groups to design career pathways and professional standards for all areas. The Trust Central Team then built a career development framework suitable for our workforce which details the training opportunities open to staff to further their careers and support their roles on their pathways.
This forms the basis of performance management for this group of staff and we commit to designing the same for our teaching staff.
2.4 Commit to enabling all members of staff to have a manageable work-life balance with the acceptance that working in education is demanding
The final part of this point is key. This year has been overwhelming for all those employed by the Trust at certain points and some groups more often than others.
As a result, further provision for wellbeing support was published and available to all staff during lockdown periods and local support offered throughout the pandemic through school leaders.
In addition, as part of our wellbeing project, we have reviewed our wellbeing service provision and have changed our Occupational Health and Employee Assistance Programme providers for a better provision to our staff members.
2.5 Train and develop more leaders that we need and ensure school leadership at all levels is effective
As part of our continued model of collaborative leadership, we know have more than 35 Trust Leaders supporting our organisation in their areas of specialism. This in turn supports Aim 1 in its entirety and objective 2.1 to recruit and retain high calibre professionals.
These are excellent CPD opportunities for staff members to embrace and make an impact on our students and enables staff to show their leadership capabilities.
In addition, our leadership teams in schools and our Trust Central Team have committed leaders who act as ambassadors for our trust and our values.
