Allyson Buckton, Headteacher, Forest of Galtres Anglican Methodist Primary School

Since joining the Hope Sentamu Learning Trust, the main things that we have been working on are around the key issues that all primary schools have currently. These include: developing the curriculum; models of assessment; and moderation and standardisation across the schools. The fact that my staff can join with teaching and support staff from other schools, look at their provision, learn lessons and bring back and share their good ideas, all has a positive impact on the children’s education.

Our children can thrive in all sorts of ways, but I think being part of a Trust gives us a real opportunity to work together to help vulnerable learners make progress. This is a huge challenge for all schools because these children have very individual, but very significant needs. We always try to meet those needs by knowing the children very well, but the fact that we can now share good practice, see examples of how others work and tap in to contacts that other staff have throughout the trust, means that we can do more to help these children to flourish.

Thriving spiritually is very much part of our ethos as a school, given our Anglican Methodist Background. When we started looking at academies on our academy journey, it was very important to the school, the staff and the governors that we were working within a trust that fully supported and understood that children thrive as spiritual beings as well as academically. We felt very strongly from the beginning that Hope offered that – joining the Trust has been a really good step for us.