Please note: Academies Enterprise Trust (AET) is now Lift Schools, this post may reference the name of the trust at time of posting.
Much has been written on Project H, AETs new open-source platform, about our trust-wide commitment to AET490. Our vision of a minimum entitlement to an excellent education for pupils across AET.
While AET schools work in all manner of circumstances and cater to a range of different pupil needs, AET490 is a mission that binds all of us. The five special schools within our network of fifty-seven will not be a burden or brake on our trust’s aims.
At Newlands Academy, we cater for pupils with Social, Emotional and Mental Health (SEMH) challenges. Last year, for the very first time, our school broke a significant milestone, with two pupils leaving us to go on to university.
Higher education may be the right pathway for some of our pupils. More often than not, it won't be. But regardless of where pupils land, our school's mission is to ensure that all of our pupils can achieve a positive destination. And we cannot avoid the truth that academic attainment opens more doors for our pupils to achieve.
However, across the specialist sector, the evidence base on how to boost attainment in schools like ours has not kept pace with the advancements we've seen across the system over recent decades.
Concepts synonymous with our arm of our system - adaptation, differentiation, and inclusive practice - are largely nebulous and lack practical application. Consequently, the quality and type of practice can be deeply inconsistent and variable. Students who need expert support the most with their learning, often go without.
At Newlands, our priority is to foreground the most effective strategy for deep collective learning - expert teaching.
It's a tireless pursuit to ensure that all our teachers are equipped with the pedagogical expertise and subject knowledge to teach to an exceptional standard. Personal adaptation and additional interventions, while essential, should supplement tried and tested strategies that improve learning for all.
Like all AET schools, reading has been a priority for us over the past year. We aim to ensure that every young person is able to leave our school with the functional literacy skills needed to thrive in society. It’s key to improving life chances, regardless of whether pupils leave for academic, technical or vocational routes.
Our Speech & Language Therapist (SALT) plays a key role in our whole school strategy, delivering staff training across a range of different subjects and developing expertise in teaching reading. Last year, for example, our SALT supported our Year 11 Maths and Science teachers to create lessons that allowed our students to better understand GCSE exam questions. As a result, we secured the best GCSE results in these subjects in the school’s history.
Over the past few years, the quality of our provision has started to mature. And although we have made significant strides, we know we have a lot more to do. To enhance quality further, there is still a lot we can learn from mainstream peers in our network to embed effective routines and habits for learning.
And while much of our approach has been informed by best practice from the mainstream, Newlands also has the expertise to give capacity back to our network.
Pupils with diagnosed SEN across the trust are far more likely to study in a mainstream school. Yet, our trust has never developed a clear approach to leverage expertise from our special schools for the benefit of our colleagues. Over the coming months and years, it's my hope that we can genuinely lend to a comprehensive trust-wide SEN strategy.
There could be countless opportunities and benefits.
For example, our staff can develop training programmes and frameworks to help staff across the trust to understand the principles behind interventions. This will help to ensure that the use of interventions is consistent and that every teacher across the network has a high level of expertise on the suitability, timeliness and follow-up support that is necessary.
Sustainable excellence is rightly the strategic ambition of our trust. We need a unifying vision where every child has the capacity to thrive in their life after school. The higher we set the bar on our vision the more likely we are to achieve great things.
However, we should not conflate this as an indicator of achievement for every pupil served by our network of schools. Our network aims of AET490 will be balanced carefully with holistic and tailored goals for our pupils.
Targets should neither constrain nor define what success looks like for individual learners. For many pupils, achievement will far exceed the minimum requirements of AET490. Achievement can also look different for the pupils whose outcomes will fall below the baseline.
For us to realise the AET490 ambition of 90% 4+ English and Maths GCSE by 2028 this means 4,000 children at this pass grade from our current Year 7s - which is a total of 4,500 children. Everything we are doing is tilted towards this goal, but even if we meet these ambitions it means that some 500 children will still not secure a pass.
Every pupil’s starting point and journey in education is different. Unfortunately, there will be pupils who, through no fault of their own or their schools, will be the 10% of pupils who do not meet headline measures.
For those pupils, across the trust we must and will broaden their horizons, use pupil voice to help students achieve their own iteration of success, and equip them with the necessary tools to pursue their aspirations.
Raising achievement through an approach centred around each child is not only necessary but our duty.
All of our pupils will have the opportunity to walk down their own distinct path to achieve in life. This is certainly what we will continue to do in our special schools. It’s applicable across our network too.
In part one of this three-part series, Phil Humphreys, Director of Secondary, outlines the capacity of network groups to raise achievement in the context of AET's challenges at the secondary level.
In part two, Craig Nicholson, Primary Regional Education Director, reveals what raising achievement through collaboration looks like in practice at the primary phase.
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