Please note: Academies Enterprise Trust (AET) is now Lift Schools, this post may reference the name of the trust at time of posting.
Too often, opportunities for children are limited by where they live or their family circumstances. This has become more evident in recent years, especially when we look at the gap between north and south, and between more and less advantaged students.
The disparity in GCSE results from this summer is stark. In London, 28.4% of GCSE entries achieved grades 9-7, contrasting the North East's 17.6%. And while national data on the disadvantage gap this year is yet to be released, our own findings at AET are telling. The gap of students attaining grades 4 or higher in English and maths has increased since 2019.
A child's potential should not be dictated by the school they go to or where they were born. Every child is not just deserving of an excellent education - it's their entitlement.
That’s why, at AET we've set a big aspiration on this premise - AET490.
By 2028, we want 90% or more to pass Phonics, KS2 RWM, KS4 English and maths, and 90% to be secure readers for their age. These numbers are far more than just a set of targets - they embody our aspirations for every student, reaffirming our belief in their potential.
Since 2019, our results have improved significantly, which is no mean feat against the national picture. But our focus at AET is not just on the aggregate outcomes for the trust; our entitlement for excellence is for every child, in every classroom, every day - the variation between our schools and across the country is just as important as absolute performance.
At Key Stage 1, we achieved an 86% pass rate, surpassing our 84% target by 2% and improving since 2019. However, there is a substantial 40 percentage point gap between our highest and lowest-performing schools.
At Key Stage 2, students meeting expected standards in reading, writing, and maths increased by 6%, reaching 70%. But the gap between our best (93%) and worst (34%) schools widened to 61 percentage points.
At Key Stage 4, 60% of students achieved a grade 4+ in English and maths in 2023, an 8% increase from 2019. This leaves a 42 percentage point gap between our top and bottom-performing schools.
Addressing this variation is central to our collective work. Everyone must look beyond their immediate surroundings and recognise their wider network influence, especially for students they may never meet.
Coordination across AET’s 57 academies is undeniably challenging though, especially given that our schools are spread across 26 local authorities. And while several of our academies are in local clusters, some are geographically isolated.
Last year, we revised the shape and structure of our organisation with the objectives of promoting:
Alignment across central functions, regions and schools to allow for more efficient and effective delivery of central services.
Collaboration between functions, schools, and across AET to improve ways of working and sharing of best practice.
Clarity around the division of roles and responsibilities across AET functions to improve efficiency, effectiveness and speed of decision making.
With these objectives, we wanted to embed a structure where every AET school could work with each other with a shared commitment to lifting the performance of the network. That way, excellent practice can be shared and replicated, people in our schools can learn with and from each other, feel part of a team, and ultimately address variation in our performance.
Through this process, we considered the optimal balance between the national ambitions of our network and the unique needs of our local schools.
In doing so, we created five distinctive regions - North, Midlands, South West, London & South, and East. In each region, professionalised governance and leadership lies with a duo of Regional Education Directors (RED), one dedicated to the primary phase and the other to the secondary. It has been brilliant to welcome them, and we will share their reflections on their role as they join us on this journey.
Together, they support and challenge school leaders across their regions to accelerate improvement. We are delighted that this September all our schools are now organised in a clear hub with their RED duo.
Over the past two years, we've worked to build a network where all our schools share a common identity. While each school might operate differently, three key guardrails inform the core work of every AET school.
1. AET490 - a galvanising ambition of high performance.
2. Distinctively AET - the six maxims which inform our entitlement.
3. The Project H Mindsets - through which we enact our culture.
Scale holds many benefits, but we constantly remind ourselves that we are a national network which exists to have a local impact. With REDs managing professional governance and newly formed Academy Councils as an effective conduit for local community feedback, we want an education in every one of our 57 schools to be informed by the needs and aspirations of each of our communities.
While the collaboration that takes place in our regions will be the engine room for improvement, it is important to establish the mechanism for staff to benefit from and be connected with other teachers and leaders across the country.
Last year, we launched 13 leadership network groups and 20 subject network groups to spread expertise across disciplines and specialisms. These groups deliberately promote collaborative efforts to break down the complexity of our work and further help us to promote improvement at scale.
This year is significant for AET as we embrace our pioneer AET490 cohorts, the pupils who will sit exams and tests in 2028. The results from this past summer have stirred enthusiasm and reflection as we contemplate the journey ahead for this group of young people and the responsibilities that we have for them.
Over the past two years, we've laid the groundwork for AET490, and now, our focus shifts to advancing this foundation. While we've defined our core principles and organised ourselves to meet the needs of our schools, what remains is the hard part: embedding these values in our day-to-day interactions.
This year, success will be whether we can start establishing the mindsets and actions that see all of our children - no matter what school they go to - become a collective responsibility.
The legacy we aim to create is not merely that of a high-performing network of schools benefiting our own children but of a network that stands as proof of concept. A network of schools that demonstrates how the contours of variation can be redressed so that the backgrounds and circumstances of children need not determine their opportunities.
This is the first part of a series that takes an honest look at the priorities of each of the five regions at AET, starting with the Midlands.
Ruth Murad, Primary Regional Education Director for the Midlands, sheds light on the importance of building a culture of openness for school improvement.
Damien Kearns, Secondary Regional Education Director for the Midlands, shares his commitment to improving schools with a focus on localism.
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