School Improvement Strategy

The purpose of school improvement at Hope Sentamu Learning Trust

Our approach to school improvement is clearly underpinned by our Trust vision and values.

To provide environments where children, young people and our communities can thrive.

Life in all its fullness – a place to thrive

Respect, Teamwork, Kindness

In order to realise our vision, school improvement is driven by the following outcomes:

• A respectful community, with a culture of thankfulness and appreciation, where we celebrate diversity.
• High quality first teaching across all of our schools, in every learning session, without exception.
• A broad and balanced educational offer which develops our pupils academically, practically, socially and spiritually, leading to outcomes above national benchmarks.
• Strong, sustainable and ethical leadership at all levels of the organisation.

Aim and objectives of our Trust school improvement

Aim:

To raise standards significantly in our schools through sustained improvement

Objectives:

• to build strong foundations in all of our schools;
• to develop a culture of collaboration;
• to enable grass roots development and transformation;
• to deploy capacity effectively across all of our schools;
• to create opportunities for career development;
• to create synergy through alignment;
• to improve retention and recruitment of staff;
• to share practice;
• to contribute to our identity as a Trust;
• to provide a platform to help others.

Our school improvement model

Our school improvement model is forensic and responsive.  We do not operate a ‘one size fits all’ model and therefore the school improvement strategy for each school is bespoke, according to its needs.  This means that we can be very precise in the way that we allocate resource to ensure maximum impact.  We believe that all schools should be continuously improving, regardless of where they are on their improvement journey so school improvement is not reserved for schools which have standards lower than we expect. Similarly, schools which are on a rapid improvement trajectory following a period of instability have much to offer other schools.  We categorise our schools on an annual basis and review every 6 months to determine overall level of need.  

In line with our values, we appreciate that everyone has something to ‘bring to the table’.  All stakeholders in our family of schools take collective responsibility for school improvement across the Trust, working collaboratively together in a self-improving, self-sustaining system, of school to school support. 

Although our school improvement is bespoke to individual schools, we do align aspects of our practice and certain activities where we have determined that we can be more effective through a consistent approach.   Having key principles, a common language and a suite of approaches for curriculum, pedagogy and assessment allows us to collaborate effectively and develop capacity quickly across the Trust so that we can be agile and immediately responsive.  Furthermore, a consistency of approach allows us to better standardise pupils’ work across the Trust which benefits all of our schools and helps the Board of Trustees to hold leaders to account in a meaningful way. We have Trust subject specialist networks, a teaching and learning network and an inclusion network which meet regularly to share practice and collaborate.  These network groups are central to driving our grass-roots approach to curriculum development as we develop as a Trust.

All stakeholders in our family of schools take collective responsibility for school improvement across the Trust, working collaboratively together in a self-improving, self-sustaining system, of school to school support.

We operate a 6-step school improvement model which is based on the EEF 5-step School Improvement Cycle and Sir David Carter’s Trust Wide Strategic Improvement Cycle.

Our School Improvement Model

1. Diagnosis
2. Prioritisation
3. Planning
4. Delivery
5. Review
6. Transmission