Medium Term
Our Medium Term School Improvement activities are made up of the following.
Peer to Peer / School to School support
This is discussed by the Principals at their fortnightly meeting group and then actioned in that meeting. The intention of the peer-to-peer work is to acquire and deepen knowledge (both subject and pedagogical practice); apply and transfer the pedagogical lessons learned into the classroom; assess the impact that any work undertaken has secured and share knowledge of what has proven to work across the wider MAT. The fortnightly Principals' meetings allow for co-ordination of the peer-to-peer work; subjects for development are identified and links are made with other Trust schools to address these areas. This develops both our own people and grows capacity within the Trust schools, making them more resilient.
Curriculum Hubs
These Hubs have developed over the last two years to network externally and bring new knowledge into the Trust to inform the local LwLAT networks. The lines of communication allow for feedback into the Principals' meetings to allow for rapid and informed curriculum specific decisions to be made. In their earliest format, Curriculum Hubs were research focussed, with participants undertaking projects. At present, they are now more for professional collaboration, curriculum development, moderation and mutual support. Colleagues wishing to undertake research are supported through different pathways.
Leadership Support
Where an Academy has specific expertise and capacity, leaders can be deployed across the Trust to ensure all schools have sufficient leadership capacity to bring about positive change.
Resources for Reading
A considerable investment is being made into resources such as Accelerated reader, NGRT testing and Direct Instruction training. Reading is a priority across all schools and phases, and we don’t believe that school budget constraints should limit access to high quality resources.
Overstaffing
Given the considerable challenges all schools have in acquiring high quality staff, we support our Principals to over recruit into key areas. This targeted approach provides improved resilience within our schools as staffing changes over time, but also provides valuable high quality capacity for intervention with our children and young people.
Resources for Assessment
We believe all our schools need high quality, detailed assessment data to enable them to set targets, identify gaps in learning and monitor progress and impact of teaching. We fund a wide range of GL assessments to ensure we have high quality, externally benchmarked data for all our children and young people.
Resources for Data management
We invest in 4 Matrix and FFT Aspire across the Trust to enable us to collaborate regarding assessment and attendance data as a Trust. We believe this reduces workload and speeds up School Improvement by rapidly identifying areas of concern and easily monitoring impact of intervention.
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