Dear Parents and Carers,

Welcome to this Trust newsletter. I hope that you will find it both informative and interesting. Following feedback from our most recent Trust Parent Survey, I know that many of you indicated that whilst you value regular communication from the organisation, you felt that more detail should be given around certain subjects, including;

• The role of the Trust and how this bond works at a school level.

• Examples of how your children benefit from being part of a Multi-academy Trust. 

Fierté Facts

Our governors are the backbone of our schools. They are volunteer members of the Fierté Family, who meet twice a term with leaders to review: 

• Curriculum and Standards Committees 

• Local Governing Committee meetings 

Many governors give up additional time for Governor's Days or to meet parents, despite working and having busy lives. They feed back to the Trust Board concerns, challenges or celebrations from their own schools across the Trust. 

An Executive Leadership Team, CEO, Vice-CEO and CFO direct the day-to-day strategic and organisational running of the Trust. This, in partnership with Executive Headteachers, Headteachers, Heads of School and a Regional Nursery Manager. Regular meetings are held to ensure that leaders across the Trust have a deep knowledge of what is happening across the organisation.

Our subsidiary company, Our Pride, Our Joy, enables the Trust to gift aid any profit made back to the Trust. This ensures that the Trust can support schools through pooled reserves, additional to their budgets. Some current examples of children in our Trust benefiting from this additional finance are; from new libraries, outdoor nursery or class areas, support in crucial building maintenance and purchasing of educational resources, e.g. Phonics resources.

A Central Support Team consisting of; an IT Manager, Admin and HR Managers, Catering Manager, Data Protection Officer, Trust Lead Practitioner and IT Technician work daily with office managers and leaders to ensure that schools are run efficiently and effectively in all aspects. This may be exemplified through support in procurement of school resources, crafting menus or delivering training, setting up iPads or other IT equipment.

I have worked in catering for over 40 years and am passionate about our children eating well. Not only do I create the menus for all schools, but I also induct new staff, oversee ordering of products, lead staff training for allergens, meet parents to draft individual menus where appropriate and quality assure the smooth running of school lunches, educational trips and visits where packed lunches may be required. I also support the design and purchase of new kitchens or equipment for our brand-new schools. Health, safety and food hygiene are a significant part of my role.  

Did you know that the Trust has its own bespoke Academy Improvement Strategy? This offers support to our individual academies and brings our family of schools together to ensure we are greater than the sum of our parts. 

This is one of my strategic responsibilities, and it is a privilege to lead on this across our Trust.

There are a small number of us within the Executive and Central Teams that work every day to strive for excellence in the service of children, staff, parents/carers and others. 

Some of the things that happen that you may not be aware of are: 

• Weekly coaching for Headteachers, Leaders, Classroom Practitioners, and others. 
• At least termly, facilitated collaboration across settings: Forums - including for Safeguarding, Curriculum, SEND and Assessment; Working Parties; an Early Career Teaching Network and many others. 
• Professional Learning designed and delivered for academies and Trust-wide including on annual Inset Days. 
• External Professional Learning from links with the Gateway Alliance and the John Taylor Teaching School Hub. 
• Sharing of research from trusted organisations such as the Education Endowment Foundation. 
• Help to make sense of the vast amount of guidance that comes from the Department of Education and other sources, so we can ensure we are always up-to-date and meeting the latest requirements, for example, on attendance, SEND and behaviour. 
• Termly Trust designed and delivered Strategy Days for all Senior Leaders. 
• IT support from within the Trust, so efficiencies are assured, and robust procedures are in place that are consistent, for example, in relation to online safety and cyber-security. 
• Ofsted support prior to, during and post-inspection. 
• Extensive support for assessment and tracking including, termly cross-Trust moderation, data analysis and evaluation. We have our own in-house systems and approaches not only for reading, writing and mathematics, but all subjects. 
• Reviewing and supporting the development of Academy Improvement Plans. 
• Termly Collaborative Picture Building in each academy, so an in-depth insight is gained into what is working well and aspects for further improvement. 
• Bi-annually, two-day Strategic Peer Reviews to dig even deeper into academy strengths, any vulnerabilities, and then specific actions to address these, almost always supported by Trust leaders rather than needing to obtain external support. 
• Termly Achievement Meetings (TAMs) in each academy where we take stock of improvements and the next steps required to sustain strengths and to move further forward in specific areas. 

And the list goes on …

Please be assured, a great deal is going on in the background to ensure we maximise the benefits from working collaboratively, respecting the uniqueness of each academy whilst making sure our drive for excellence is relentless. 

Did you know that the Trust has a Central Support Team? 

The Central Support Team offers support and guidance to our individual academies to ensure they provide an excellent teaching and learning experience to all children in the Trust.    

The items below are part of my strategic responsibilities, and it is an honour to lead in these areas across our Trust.   

 Some of the things that happen that you may not be aware of are: 

• Centralised support for financial, premises, catering, and HR matters. 

• Monthly meetings are held with Headteachers to monitor the income and expenditure and allocated budget, including the funding available to support the delivery of the Academy Improvement Plans.  

• Support as required for Premises and Admin staff to ensure they can fulfil their roles and to ensure that the required statutory reporting is completed. 

• The completion of statutory audits in line with the Academy Handbook. 

• Overseeing the support from external agencies for HR, governance and legal matters.  

• The organisation and delivery of appropriate training Trust-wide, including office managers, catering staff and site managers.

• Support for premises matters including submitting bids for additional government funding for buildings and maintenance. 

• Delivering an in-house catering function, including establishing a menu that is offered across all our Academies which encourages children to explore food choices.

 And much more…   

Behind the scenes, there is ongoing support for the non-teaching elements of running our academies, which ensures our children are educated in a safe learning environment where they can reach their potential.

We care...

Our schools work hard to show that they care, a core Trust value. Please see below a flavour of the diverse and wonderful activities our pupils have engaged in…

It is always wonderful to see how caring our children are at Ankermoor, and this has never been so apparent as with our current Year 6 children who have taken it upon themselves to support our younger children during lunchtimes. These inspirational role models help with their younger protégés to develop social skills, confidence, turn taking, friendship building and understanding of making good choices. Giving up parts of their own lunchtimes to support on the Key Stage One playground and the dining hall, as well as constantly being vigilant and reporting back to the teacher about any concerns or worries they may have about them. We are so proud of the caring young adults they are clearly becoming, and we look forward to our next cohort of ‘Super Mentors’ at Ankermoor Primary Academy.

It is also a pleasure to share with you the news of one of our charitable Year 5 children, Lacey has already been sponsored for swimming a great distance earlier in the year to raise money for a local charity and now she is ready to raise even more money again by completing a long distance swim – well done Lacey we are extremely proud of you!

As part of Year 2's RE Curriculum, they learnt about how babies of different ages are cared for and then thought about how their parents care for them, now that they are older. We were incredibly lucky to be visited by some baby brothers and sisters (and moms as well), who talked about how they care for the babies and answered lots of questions from the class.

Caring Cavan's Climb. 

Cavan, a Y4 pupil at Dosthill, was struck by the school's assemblies and lessons that highlight the issues pupils his age (both home and abroad) have to face up to in their everyday life. 

The school focuses on key values it wants each pupil to develop, and categorises them into moral, civic, intellectual, and performance virtues. Cavan, like many other pupils in the school, is a kind and caring person and wanted to combine his love of the outdoors with additional fundraising for Children in Need following the school's charitable causes. Thanks to his efforts, he has already raised more than £400, and over eight times his original goal. 

At Edge Hill, We Care... We care about our curriculum and finding ways to deepen this with other pupils across our trust. Recently, our Modern Foreign leaders met from Edge Hill and Dosthill. It was decided that we would write letters in French to each other introducing ourselves. Here are some of our Year 4 pupils: Willow, Isabelle, Thomas and Alfie, sharing their letters which will be sent this week - how exciting! 

At Glascote Academy, we have an Eco-Committee consisting of Miss Phillips (Outdoor Leader), Miss Pearson (OPOJ Manager), Miss Bowers (Assistant Headteacher), Mr Taylor (Farm Assistant) plus 12 pupils known as our "Eco-Warriors" from Years 1 to year 6.

The Eco-Committee has:

• Pledged to use less energy, eat less meat and make sustainable choices. 
• Conducted environmental reviews across the school.
• It was found that we excel in our school grounds, biodiversity and transport, and the areas we need to improve are global citizenship, energy, waste and marine life.
• Created Glascote's Eco Code.
• Put up signs around school reminding people to switch off lights and put litter in the bin.
• Elected themselves to encourage others to turn off lights, put litter in the bin and share sustainable ideas with friends and family.

Classes have also shown that they care about promoting biodiversity in their outdoor weeks through the creation of bug hotels and areas in the forest that are not disturbed to encourage wildlife onto our school grounds. 

At Garden Village Primary Academy, we care wholeheartedly about our new Reception cohort who are due to start their learning journey in September 2024. To support the children's transition, we are visiting the children at their current pre-school settings, in their family homes and plan to open the new school in August for the children to visit and have a stay and play session at the newly built school. Building relationships with the children, their families and the local community is one of our priorities for the opening of Garden Village Primary Academy in the Autumn Term. 

Throughout the summer term the children experience lots of change, to help through this period of time we are focussing our assemblies on 'caring and looking after your emotional health'. We have revisited strategies used for self-regulation, restocked our classroom self-regulation baskets. After half term we are introducing our playground 'self-regulation station'. We hope that some children will be able to access this station, stop and think about their emotions and behaviours and then become calm and relaxed and re-engage with their peers on the playground and enjoy the remainder lunchtimes!

At Wilnecote, our Year 6 children made stockings as part of their Design and Technology work to send them to sick children in a local hospital. Year 3 made cards for older people in care homes. Additionally, our Eco Council have worked hard to clean up our school environment through litter picking and gardening. We have even planted some fruit trees so that eventually children can have school-grown fruit as a snack from the kitchen! Also, Year 5 have worked hard at the local fire station to learn what to do to help others in times of crisis by learning first aid and CPR. Furthermore, the whole school took part in the Show Racism the Red Card day to raise awareness of and prevent racism from happening in our school and local area.

We Care at Violet Way. Violet Way have had a new Headteacher this term, Mrs Harris, they have shown a great number of ways that they care greatly in how they have welcomed her. At Violet Way we have playtime leaders, they have shown great care in how they support friends at playtime, making sure no one is left behind and supporting each other every step of the way.