Please note: Academies Enterprise Trust (AET) is now Lift Schools, this post may reference the name of the trust at time of posting.
The first weeks of the summer break have been a valuable opportunity to reflect back on our Summer Principals’ Conference which focused on the theme of “Sustainable Excellence”. We explored what that might look like in practice and reflected on the explicit culture will be needed to sustain an entitlement to excellence for every child. In the first of a three part series, we explore what this means and looks like.
In March, we set our principals a challenge: what would it take to deliver a shared ambition for 90% of our children to read at, or above, their chronological reading age, pass the phonics check, achieve the expected standard in RWM at Key Stage 2, and achieve at least grade 4 in English and maths GCSEs - by 2028.
The 2028 goal is quite deliberately two years in advance of the DfE’s stated ambitions in the Schools White Paper, and is now the manifestation of our mission to deliver an entitlement to excellence for every child.
AET 490 is a bold ambition. And it will require an unrelenting focus to deliver sustainable excellence in all of our 57 schools.
For a trust of our scale, with a footprint across every region of the country, realising AET 490 in every school requires us to enter new territory.
At our Summer Principals’ Conference, our discussions centred around how we can recalibrate our individual expectations so that we collectively deliver this level of sustainable excellence. And for us, recalibration means genuine alignment around our vision that the potential in every child is realised in every classroom, every day, year-on-year. We all have to believe that it is possible.
AET 490 requires us to be truly network-minded in intent and action. We are only as strong as our weakest school. And to break the glass ceiling of national standards, our network of schools must re-organise around these targets. Challenging ourselves to think deeply about what we must do differently, and better.
In reality, alignment is as much about mindset as it is about action. It’s every adult’s firm commitment to get better every day, acknowledging that each of us, and each of our schools, has something to give and even more to learn.
So, what does this actually look like in practice?
By harnessing the collective expertise across our network of schools, we will move further and faster than schools working in isolation.
In year one of our strategy toward AET 490, we’ve focused on establishing an architecture for collaboration - developing network groups that will serve as solution-focused communities of practice.
We have established 13 groups where senior leaders across the trust work collectively around different elements components of school improvement. These Network Leadership Groups sit alongside subject network groups for middle leaders from all of our schools, in every discipline.
Now that we’ve developed structures which will leverage the wide pool of expertise across our network, our next challenge is how to scale expertise to reduce variation within and between our schools.
Next year, subject networks will agree on the core curriculum entitlement to be taught in each of our schools. Additionally, we’ll implement a training plan around our curriculum principles.
Alignment should never be secured at the expense of localism. Rightly, each of our schools must be responsive to the needs of the communities they serve. We celebrate the unique aspect of each AET school’s culture and character, but know that we are more similar than we are different.
We are working hard to strike the right balance between purposeful alignment around a shared vision and local connectivity and priorities. In the spirit of “turning the network inside out” we are giving network groups the agency to shape their pathway, knowing that success will come from our educators creating, and then owning the delivery of the strategy.
But such an approach requires our schools to commit to delivering an excellent education for all children from across the network, and the moral imperative to work intentionally with one another to make this happen. As individuals this means we have to care deeply about what happens in schools which may be hundreds of miles apart. Our internal version of system generosity!
A key facilitating role of the centre is to deliberately design our organisation to establish the collective culture that allows us to identify where we have real expertise so that we can develop and codify the models of excellence which underpin our approach to school improvement.
We are committed to openly sharing our school and network improvement strategy, tools and resources through Project H, a pioneering initiative that breathes life into our commitment to transparency and system generosity.
Launching in September, Project H will be a new way of working for our trust, serving as both an open source channel and embodying a new mindset for our schools to work with each other. As we develop insights from our own work we will promote this with the wider sector so that Project H becomes a centre to debate and discuss the significant ideas and practices in education, from the applied context of our own experience.
Our schools are stronger when they work together. Sustainable excellence can be realised at scale, so long as we collectively embrace the power of our network with energy and enthusiasm.
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