The Learning Trust for Excellence
The recently expanded Learning Trust for Excellence, comprises a group of ten high achieving schools in and around Sutton Coldfield. The experienced Headteachers work collaboratively to learn from the strengths of each other, share excellent practice and work together to be the best they can be in order to provide the best possible life chances and education across the Trust. The involvement of key partners to support the achievement of the vision is crucial, offering mutually beneficial opportunities in the pursuit of excellence in education and high aspirations for the whole learning community. The original 7 primary schools; Coppice, Four Oaks, Langley School, Little Sutton, Hollyfield, Moor Hall and Whitehouse Common have been joined by Court Farm, Deanery Church of England, Town Junior and Holland House. They work together with the partners King Edwards Schools, Bishop Vesey’s Grammar School, Beaufort Special School, BCU, UCB, the Co-operative College and the Rotary Association. The collaboration is a proactive response to the changing educational landscape, inspiring excellence and furthering opportunity for all.
The co-operative values are:
Self-Help: Being willing to help oneself and not just rely on others to assist you.
Self-Responsibility: Being able to act or decide on your own and then handle the consequences.
Equity: When things are fair, reasonable and impartial. When justice is seen to be done.
Equality: When everyone gets an equal share, chance or opportunity.
Solidarity: Sticking together and working as a team. Supporting each other with strengths.
Democracy: A system where everyone gets a say, everyone's voice is heard and everyone's opinion counts.
The pupils visit other Trust schools taking part in working days exploring the values with others in their year group. The children have also been involved in dedicated collaborative activities including raising money for the Rotary campaign against polio.
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The key aims of our Trust are to inspire excellence by: |
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Working together has made a real difference, continually improving the quality of teaching and learning as well as the management of schools. Both teaching and non-teaching staff at all levels, as well as Governors within the schools, are encouraged to work together to share excellent practice, support development and tackle new agendas introduced by both local and national government. Representatives across the schools and partners work together to develop curriculum, share expertise and learning from one another, devise common policies and take ideas and best practice to suit the individual needs of each school. Working groups tackle topics including Maths, Literacy, the Early Years programme, Special Education Needs, Year 6 work and developing a strategic approach to the use, management, teaching and assessment of ICT across the schools. There is also a focus on school procurement and achieving economies of scale. The Trust schools collectively commission high quality training to address the shared priorities. For example, staff from across the schools have attended joint INSET with training from leading national specialists in Reading, Maths and History. The Trust works with schools across the city sharing the outcomes of their work and helping them raise their standards.
Stronger Together – Utilising the power of collaboration to deliver excellence in safeguarding
Safeguarding is of paramount importance to schools and runs across all aspects of school life. The LTE was awarded a Leading Aspect Award for its collaborative approach to delivering excellence in safeguarding. The work recognized by the Leading Aspect Award arose as a result of the complex, sensitive and ever changing requirements of safeguarding practice in schools. All schools were working to address common challenges and issues and decided to come together to develop a coherent and comprehensive approach to ensure schools are addressing all current safeguarding requirements and demonstrating excellent practice in this area.
In December 2014, our Trust was awarded the Leading Aspect Award in recognition of the impact of the wide range of collaborative work taking place. The Leading Aspect Award is a national award that identifies and celebrates leading practice in education. To read more about this, click here.
In March 2015 our trust had a visit from officials from the Department for Education.
If you would like more information about the LTE or have ideas for developing new areas of work please contact Richard Green at r.green@coppice.bham.sch.uk.
