There are 26 open primary schools in Greenwood Academies Trust. These include an all through (3-19) academy, 3 infant academies and 5 junior academies.

 

 

1. Building capacity and expertise in leaders and practitioners 

GAT Collaborative Communities

At the heart of our primary improvement and professional learning strategy are our Collaborative Communities. These comprise a wide range of networks, groups and forums for colleagues to participate in and contribute to, leveraging the expertise from leaders in our academies, the Education Directorate Primary Team and external specialists.

There are three key leadership Collaborative Communities that develop expertise and capacity in priority areas of focus and drive our work, ensuring it is responsive to need and fully engaged in by colleagues.  They work with relevant experts to develop best practice and engage in national debate and conversation.  The three leadership communities are interconnected, with Principals driving the strategy.

Each of the Collaborative Communities is chaired by an Education Director and the membership is drawn from identified middle and senior leaders in each of our primary academies.

Primary Principals Leadership Community (PPL)

• This collaborative community is comprised of Principals and Executive Principals from all individual academies. This is the overarching leadership community with a remit of improving standards across the phase and focus areas including outcomes and attendance.  The PPL determines overall priorities for the year and as such has oversight of the work strands in the other leadership communities and the Raising Standards Lead Network.  This ensures Principals and Executive Principals can align and maximise GAT professional learning opportunities with academy improvement and processes.  This community meets 3 times a year.

Curriculum & Innovation Leadership Community (CIL)

• This is comprised of the nominated curriculum leads in each of our primary academies. It aims to improve the quality of curriculum in all primary academies via a programme of professional learning, sharing practice and resources. It will also make recommendations about any trust level curriculum decisions.  The strategic direction of the CIL is shaped during the Primary Principals Leadership meeting in the spring term.  The outcomes of this work feeds into all Networks and input at the spring collaborative Curriculum conference.  The CIL meets 6 times a year.

Teaching & Learning Leadership Community (TLL)

• This is comprised of the Teaching & Learning Leads in each of our primary academies. It aims to improve the quality of teaching and learning in all primary academies.  This is largely achieved through the professional development strategy associated with our GAT 9 Principles of High-Quality Inclusive Primary Teaching. The strategic direction of the TLL is shaped during the Primary Principals Leadership meeting in the autumn term. This then feeds into all Networks and input at the autumn collaborative Teaching & Learning conference.  The TLL meets 6 times a year.

We also have an extensive range of professional networks that practitioners and leaders participate in and contribute to:

Core	Subject Leadership	Specialist
Raising Standards Attendance Pupil Premium SEND Early Years Deputy Principals	Reading Writing Phonics Mathematics Science D&T Art & Design Music RE PE History Geography Computing PSHE and RSE MFL	Outdoors PKC Curriculum Careers Education Enhanced Provision Digitech

 

Professional learning and development

The GAT Professional Learning Programme is an extensive, agile programme of professional development, courses, resources and training for a range of roles in academies. It comprises face-to-face learning, online sessions and asynchronous content facilitated by a range of internal and external experts.

Focused projects and professional learning are developed each year dependent on need, often in collaboration with national experts.  The programme does not intend to cover all of the professional development needs of every individual and academy; it focuses on trust level improvement priorities.  We encourage colleagues to use local, regional and national external programmes and offers where appropriate to complement the GAT offer.

Leadership development opportunities run throughout the year and we have an annual Principals’ conference in the summer term.

 

2. Ensuring ambitious and sustainable academy-level improvement

The most important part of our Primary Improvement Strategy is ensuring each academy can effectively self-evaluate and develop personalised, ambitious improvement plans that bring about rapid improvement where necessary. 

The Education Directorate Primary Team

Led by a Senior Education Director responsible for the delivery of the strategy and the implementation of the Primary Framework, the Education Directors and Senior Education Advisers, for Early Years and SEND, provide professional challenge and support to our primary academies, helping leadership to effectively evaluate performance, identify priorities for improvement and plan effective change. Each academy has an allocated Education Director (ED). They support academy leaders and take each academy through the improvement and assurance work, ensuring all meetings, reviews and interactions are completed and internal monitoring processes are adhered to.

The Primary Improvement Strategy and Framework are founded on a number of principles:

• the prime responsibility for academy improvement remains with the Principal
• academies are encouraged to have an autonomous vision, aligned to GAT values
• a key aim is to support academies to develop effective procedures for accurate self-evaluation and improvement planning, and the ability to identify and commission additional support effectively for themselves
• the expectations of contribution and involvement in assurance activities are clearly identified in the primary framework
• capacity and expertise for system led improvement will be supported and developed
• the professional partnership and communication between the Principal and ED are critical but academies will benefit from the expertise of the whole primary Education Directorate team
• the amount of support provided to academies depends on their needs, as identified through a risk register process
• processes are designed to be positive, focusing on strengths as well as identifying areas for development
• formal delegated responsibilities (e.g. for budget) are described in GAT schemes of delegation but if concerns are identified, delegated responsibilities can be removed and given to EDs

The Primary Framework sets out how we support, development and challenge.  There is a framework handbook that describes the approach, provides guidance and clarifies expectations.  We have been careful in designing our approaches so they are useful, insightful and effective as well as being considerate of workload and potential disruption to normal routines.  The framework handbook is designed to accompany a suite of other tools and materials that underpin the work of academy leaders.

Academy RAG ratings

Each academy has an overall ‘RAG’ rating (Red, Amber, Green) to help us allocate the appropriate level of internal support and challenge in order to secure improvement.  The overall RAG is underpinned by a number of identified ‘Risk Indicators’ that are clearly described in the Primary Framework.  These are aligned to the ‘Good to Great’ approach that also reflects the stage of an academy journey in improvement.  For individual Risk Indicators, we identify and describe them as:

Red	Intervention required	Stabilising
Amber	Not yet fully assured	Improving
Green	Fully assured	Securing
Blue	Fully assured with exemplars of great practice	Advancing

 

Curriculum

Due to the diverse nature of the academies in GAT, we do not have a standardised approach to the development of a curriculum or schemes of work across our Primary academies.  We are proud to support academies craft and shape a curriculum that meets the requirements of the National Curriculum and reflects the context of their community as well as being engaging for our pupils.

We encourage our academies, their leaders and teachers to be innovative and forward thinking in their approach to planning a purposeful curriculum. In order to achieve this we expect our academies to continually review the effectiveness of their curriculum.

The fundamental principles are that a curriculum should be:

• of quality
• contextualised to reflect the community of the academy
• developing core transferable knowledge and skills
• securing progress in the core areas of reading, writing and mathematics
• broad and balanced
• meeting the expectations set out in the National Curriculum

We assure this through our quality assurance processes.

 

Teaching and learning

We recognise that the quality of teaching is the most important element in supporting children to achieve well and thrive in our academies.  Therefore, we are continually striving to improve the pedagogical skills of our teachers and other professionals. 

We do not have a GAT-prescribed way of teaching and learning, but all of our professional development in this area is framed against our GAT 9 Principles of High-Quality Inclusive Primary Teaching that were developed in partnership with leaders and teachers across the trust. The 9 principles are:

Behaviour & Relationships	High Expectations	Explaining and Modelling
Practice and Rehearsal	Questioning	Adaptive and Responsive Teaching
Effective Feedback	Retrieval and review	Teacher Knowledge

 

We have a wealth of resources, guidance and professional learning opportunities linked to these principles that can be used strategically by leaders or for self-study by individuals.

Assessment

There is a GAT Primary assessment protocol and calendar in place that all academies and leaders have agreed to.   This outlines minimum expectations around assessment, moderation and data collection in relation to pupil progress and outcomes.  This approach allows us to ensure high quality assessments and performance judgements are being made whilst also supporting colleagues to share knowledge and expertise, arrange joint professional development, facilitate moderation and implement quality assurance processes.

A standard platform (Insight) is used as the tracking and data management tool and FFT is used to contribute to target setting.  Trust level analysis is also done using these systems and therefore no separate data collections are required for this.  

3. Trust level quality assurance processes

Quality Assurance activities provide academies with information to improve their self-evaluation and improvement planning. They also feed into GAT oversight and governance procedures.

Primary academies work with their ED on an annual assurance cycle. The process has been designed to dovetail with a standard academy-level review cycle to add value and independent validation. The associated paperwork has been created to support leaders focus on key improvement priorities and to minimise workload.

At the start of the year a detailed conversation and focused dialogue take place that confirms Academy Improvement Plan (AIP) priorities and how these are going to be implemented, monitored and supported. An evaluation of the progress of these priorities takes place each large term. In addition, a series of agreed and/or bespoke reviews and AIP related visits from the ED, as set out in the Primary Framework are conducted that allow more detailed investigation into key themes and some standard compliance checks on statutory expectations are made. These are all set out clearly in an annual calendar.